MONTICELLO, Ind. (WRTV) — A 32-year-old former band teacher at Roosevelt Middle School and Twin Lakes High School has pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison for sexual misconduct with a minor, attorneys say.
Last year, an Indiana couple filed a federal lawsuit against the school corporation, located in Monticello, and their daughter’s teacher, Timothy Bulow, who taught at the school from 2023 to 2025. According to attorneys, the parents’ lawsuit claims that Bulow had a history of texting female students, including their daughter.
“Before he started grooming my client, he was giving multiple girls at the school his personal cell phone number and texting them,” said Tom Blessing, the family’s attorney. Blessing says that Bulow had been texting students for years, and it was “common knowledge in the Twin Lakes community.”
Court documents say that Bulow had sex with a girl, under 16 years old, multiple times, including at her home and Bulow’s home. Inappropriate touching was reported to have happened in the school’s band room. Multiple times, Bulow picked the girl up from a bus stop before school, took her back to his home to have sex, then took her to school.
Prior to learning about the relationship, the victim’s parents said they had suspicions and uncertainties about Bulow for over a year. On the girl’s computer, the parents found a picture of Bulow lying in bed. They also found text messages between Bulow and the girl.
Bulow made comments to the girl about committing suicide if they were caught, saying, “If you rat me out, I’m dead,” and “I’ll kill myself before being put in a jail cell,” according to court documents.
“Students knew he was doing it. Teachers knew he was doing it. Other parents knew it. School administrators knew it. It had been going on for years, yet they allowed him to get away with it,” Blessing said in a release.
According to the lawsuit, when school officials finally reported Bulow to DCS for suspected sexual abuse of the girl, they did not notify her parents the same day. Her parents were told the following day, “allowing him to abuse her one more time,” according to Blessing.
The lawsuit accuses the school of leaving students unsupervised for about an hour in the mornings. Blessings says this is just one of the “multiple institutional failures” that led to his client being
abused.
After an investigation by DCS and local police, Bulow was arrested in April 2025 and charged with three counts of felony sexual misconduct with a minor.
On May 15, Bulow appeared in court, where he pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
