In December 2020, a judge with the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services overturned the 2019 case against former Blount County Schools teacher Joseph Michael Dalton. New documents obtained by The Daily Times show the evidence presented in Dalton’s appeal may not have been the complete picture. The former teacher even admitted to touching the student who reported him, but claimed the contact was an accident.
Dalton pleaded guilty to multiple counts of offensive touching last month, admitting to having inappropriate contact with students from 9-12 years old. The charge is a form of simple assault. Dalton, who taught for Blount County Schools from 2004-2023, has been the subject of at least nine police reports alleging he inappropriately touched students.
It wasn’t until 2023 that the Blount County District Attorney’s Office launched its own investigation, bringing charges against the former gym teacher in January of 2024. Those charges have been solidified, and with Dalton’s guilty plea, the last two decades of closed investigations have been cast into doubt. Allegations almost stuck in 2020.
In the fall of 2019, one of Dalton’s students told her parents Dalton had squeezed her buttocks while sitting in class. DCS staff began an investigation two days later, and on Feb. 12, 2020, DCS Reviewer Dana J.
Scott informed BCS HR Director David Murrell that Dalton had been “identified as the alleged perpetrator of child abuse or child neglect in a substantiated inve.
