CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga. — A Cherokee County jury found the long time band director at Reinhardt University not guilty of sexual battery charges Friday, but Dr. David Gregory says the damage to his reputation has already been done.
"I was professionally and personally devastated,” Gregory told Channel 2’s Ross Cavitt.
He says when a student accused him of inappropriately touching her, it hit him like a ton of bricks.
"In the 45 years that I've worked with students and the thousands and thousands of students I've come in contact with, nothing like this has ever (happened). Not one impropriety has been reported. Not one complaint has been filed,” he said.
"He was absolutely innocent and he did everything that he could to show that he was innocent and that was used against him,” attorney Kim Keheley Frye said.
Cherokee County jurors took less than 20 minutes to find Gregory not guilty on sexual battery and battery charges.
Gregory had already abruptly resigned after 10 years at Reinhardt University after being told it would otherwise end harshly.
"I never was given an opportunity to refute or rebut or say my side,” he said.
The school sent out an email to faculty, students about his arrest and a Google search now is likely to show Gregory not in a conductor's bow tie, but in jail orange.
“There is a rush to judgement, and when one sees one’s picture in the papers, the local papers in a jumpsuit, there is an assumption of guilt,” he said.
Gregory says he was forced to retire earlier than he wanted and lost six months-worth of salary and benefits.
“There is nothing he can do remove the instancy of this allegation going out against him. He can't remove it, but what the jury can do, and did do, is say it was absolutely not proven in this case,” she said.
Gregory says he’s just glad it’s all over.
“To wake up in the morning and not have the burden of untruthful legal allegations against me. Now I find that I am truly a free person to be retired after 45 years of working with young people,” he said.
Gregory and his attorney say they want to use his case as a lesson for others.
"I think everybody thinks it can't happen to me. That this could never happen to me because I'm not going to do anything wrong. Dr. Gregory did nothing wrong,” Frye said.
"We are vulnerable, but I would also say to them that is the risk you have to take if you want to teach and there's no profession more gratifying than teaching,” Gregory said.