Abdul Wright begged and pleaded with a woman when she confronted him about his alleged sexual assault of her daughter, asking them not to take legal action and confessing that he had a “warped” mind.
Two phone call recordings between Wright and the mother totaling more than an hour in length were played in court during his trial Tuesday. The woman confronted Wright in May 2024 after her daughter confided in her about the alleged abuse that occurred seven years earlier when she was 14.
“I hate it with my whole heart, and I’m so sorry,” Wright said in one call recording. “I hate how I’ve hurt y’all, I hate it all.”
Sahan Journal is not identifying the former student, now 22, or her mother due to the nature of the crime.
Wright, 39, is charged with one count of first-degree criminal sexual conduct for allegedly sexually assaulting his former student during the 2016-2017 school year, after he had been named the Minnesota Teacher of the Year for 2016. He was the student’s eighth grade language arts teacher at Harvest Best Academy, a north Minneapolis charter school. His bench trial began Monday.
The former student testified Monday and Tuesday that Wright repeatedly assaulted her, including in multiple classrooms at the school.
Wright pleads for mother not to report allegations
The student’s mother took the stand Tuesday afternoon, and said she sent Wright a message on Snapchat after she found out about the alleged abuse.
“When were you going to tell me you [expletive] my 14-year-old daughter?” the woman testified she wrote in her message.
She testified that she became friends with Wright while her daughter was in his class, and that she trusted him at the time.
The mother testified that Wright called her, and that she recorded their conversations.
In two phone call recordings played in court, Wright repeatedly asked what the family wanted to do, and if they were going to report the allegations to law enforcement.
“Is there any way you could just please not do that?” he asked, sobbing in the first phone call recording played in court. “Can you not pursue legal action? Please, please, please.”
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Later in the same recording, Wright said he wanted “to make it right,” and offered to quit his teaching job. In the second recording, he offered to move out of the state or country. He also suggested a restorative justice approach.
“I don’t know how you can repair it, the damage is done,” the mother told Wright in the first recording.
Wright, who sounded emotional in both recordings, said he was going through a divorce at the time of the alleged abuse, and that he was in a poor mental state.
“I didn’t see it for the way that it actually happened,” he said in the first recording. “I didn’t understand what the [expletive] was going on.”
The mother said in both recordings that it was up to her daughter if she wanted to take action, and that they had not contacted the police.
The girl’s mother told Wright he made his decisions as an adult, and that he needed to face the consequences.
“You are the bad guy in this story,” she said in the second recording.
“I am,” Wright replied.
Wright, dressed in a suit in the courtroom, looked down as the phone recordings were played in court. The former student’s mother, sitting on the witness stand, stared at a television screen as the audio was played, often resting her head in her hand.
The former student’s mother later reported the allegations to law enforcement, and criminal charges were filed in August 2024.
Student says Wright made her take emergency contraception
The former student took the witness stand again Tuesday morning. She testified that the abuse continued after she graduated middle school, and into the summer of 2017.
Wright would take her to a house he was staying at where other people also lived, she testified, adding that she had to enter through the back door and rush into the basement so she wouldn’t be seen. She said Wright had her take emergency contraception about every week at times, which made her feel unwell.
The abuse stopped when her father confronted Wright and Harvest Best leadership with her phone records, which showed an extensive amount of phone calls and text messages between her and Wright, she testified. Many of the phone exchanges occurred in the middle of the night. Her father sought a restraining order, and he and Wright came to an agreement that limited Wright’s communication with her.
The former student said she kept in contact with Wright for several years afterward, but that they didn’t see each other in person again. She testified that once she started studying psychology in college, it opened up a “can of worms,” and she began to process what had happened.
She said she had spent years protecting Wright, and would brush off suspicions from family members or friends, and deleted messages Wright sent her after he instructed her to.
She eventually told her mother in 2024.
“I felt like I couldn’t carry the burden anymore alone,” she said. “I felt like it was destroying me.”
During cross-examination, Wright’s attorney, Frederick Goetz, pressed her about why she didn’t report her allegations before 2024, and why she denied her family members’ earlier suspicions.
“Even though you knew if this was really happening, that Mr. Wright was a predator, you never said anything?” Goetz asked.
“No, I protected him,” she replied.
Wright’s other attorney, Natalie Cote, asked the former student’s mother about the civil lawsuit her daughter filed against Wright and Harvest Best Academy seeking monetary damages.
“Is that something you want to see?” Cote asked, referring to the money.
“No, I want to see justice, I don’t care about monetary gain,” the mother replied.
Testimony in the trial is expected to resume Wednesday.
