A 42-year-old teacher accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl over a five-month period began his contact with the victim when he started driving the 14-year-old Hawaiian Mission Academy student to school three years ago, a police affidavit said.
A preliminary hearing will be held for Bryan Lindberg at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in District Court, where he faces 11 counts of first-degree sexual assault and five counts of third-degree assault. At his initial court appearance Friday, District Court Judge Leslie Hayashi set Lindberg’s bail at $200,000.
Lindberg, dressed in a green aloha shirt and jeans, did not make a statement after appearing in court. He was represented by deputy public defender Jason Cranburg.
He was arrested at noon Wednesday at Leilehua High School, where he has been employed as a geometry and algebra teacher since July 2009. Aloha Coleman, Leilehua principal, said Lindberg was placed on leave and not allowed back on campus following his arrest.
Police said that assaults occurred at the private school on Pensacola Street in October 2008, when the victim was a freshman, and continued until March 2009.
Lindberg, who lives in Mililani, would pick up the girl at her house at 5 or 6 a.m. and drive her to school every morning, a police affidavit said.
The two would go to Lindberg’s classroom, where they became "physically intimate" behind a locked door and he "began to teach" the girl about sex on a couch in the room.
The victim identified Lindberg on Oct. 12 by picking him out of a photographic lineup. Both the girl and her mother are working with police on the case.
Hawaii Mission Academy High School Principal Hugh Winn said Lindberg left the private school for personal reasons. Winn, who didn’t arrive at the school until after Lindberg left, said he did not know Lindberg and was not interviewed by police about the case.
Lindberg worked for the Department of Education between August 1993 and July 2006, teaching at Waialua High and Intermediate and Wahiawa Middle and Mililani Middle schools.
Hawaii News Now video: Schoolteacher accused of sexually assaulting student appears before judge
