EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – As an educator, Brian Troy Nuñez was an authority figure to the hundreds of children at an El Paso elementary school.
That’s why red flags went up at several El Paso law enforcement agencies when his name came up during an investigation of someone in their community uploading child sexual abuse material to an online storage service.
The tip Homeland Security Investigations agents received on June 6, 2023, from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led to a search warrant of Nunez’s online Dropbox account. The search yielded videos of a “pre-pubescent female child” engaging in sexually explicit activity, a criminal complaint affidavit filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas alleged.
Nuñez was arrested last September and has since been convicted of federal charges of receipt and possession of a visual depiction involving the sexual exploitation of a child. On Thursday, HSI announced he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
But the legal troubles of the former teacher at Beall Elementary School are far from over. Nuñez is being charged by Texas state prosecutors with sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child, El Paso District Attorney Bill Hicks said.
“One thing we’ve always tried to emphasize to children is to trust authority figures – to trust the police, to trust their teachers,” Hicks said on Thursday. “When we have a teacher or a law enforcement officer who betrays that trust, it’s of particular interest to that we pursue that prosecution.”
A state conviction could mean 20 or more years in prison for Nuñez. That’s why Hicks wants to try him on state charges even after he’s been federally sentenced.
The victim is described as being under 12 years of age. Hicks said the state offense “did not occur on school grounds” thought the initial contact and “grooming process” of the child began at school.
Jason T. Stevens, HSI acting special agent in charge in El Paso, said his office handles about 20 child porn investigations per year and has an ongoing campaign to encourage parents to protect their children from online predators.
“We have this program called ‘Know to Protect’ that we launched this spring. We wanted to get this out in the community prior to students beginning the next school year,” he said. “If you reach out to HSI El Paso, we will send somebody out to the schools, to the community groups. We want to educate not only the students but to educate the parents.”
Parents are a “critical piece” to prevent children from being approached by online sexual predators because nowadays every child with a smart phone is a potential target, Stevens said.
HSI’s Know to Protect website is know2protect.gov. The community outreach hotline is 915-856-5217.
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