GLENDALE (WISN) — It was a Wednesday afternoon in November 2018 when a 4-year-old girl claimed her swim instructor “tickled her ‘private zone'” underwater at the Elite Sports Club in Glendale, court records show.
“Bri didn’t want people to know about the touching,” a criminal complaint said the little girl told investigators, referring to Brianne Taylor.
Taylor, 35, is charged with first-degree sexual assault and obstructing an officer in connection to the investigation.
No one answered the door at Taylor’s apartment, but she responded to a text message sent by WISN 12 News’ Derrick Rose.
“I’ve been accused of something, falsely accused of something, and it’s just gone down the deep end. So, or, you know, it’s not going down the deep end any more, because I’m fighting it,” Taylor said without elaborating on her version of what happened.
During the investigation, prosecutors wrote in the complaint, Madison police investigated a similar claim by an 11-year-old against Taylor in 2014 when she worked at the YMCA Madison East.
“The allegation was that Taylor put her hand inside the 11 year old’s swimsuit, touching her butt for approx. 3 seconds,” Glendale police Detective Scott Purtell wrote of the previous case in a search warrant affidavit.
“They misreported that, which is … yeah,” Taylor said about the Madison investigation, “I learned from this experience that you can’t trust anybody that you don’t know.”
According to the search warrant affidavit, which was seeking Taylor’s employment records from Madison, she worked at the YMCA in Madison from June 2014 through July 2017, but neither the human resources director nor the aquatic director would reveal why Taylor was terminated from that job.
“More specifically, they would not answer whether Taylor had inappropriate physical contact with a child,” Purtell wrote.
Officials with the Dane County YMCA did not return an email from WISN 12 News seeking comment on Taylor’s employment.
A manager at Elite Sports Club in Glendale was not available for comment about when Taylor was hired, whether background checks were completed or if officials knew about the allegations from Madison.
Detectives interviewed Taylor in December and said she denied ever being accused of having inappropriate contact with a child.
Court records show Glendale police received Taylor’s employment records from the YMCA in Madison on April 22.
Prosecutors, in the criminal complaint, said Taylor had lost jobs because of “boundary issues” with regard to personal space: “The defendant lied to Detective Purtell about ever being fired or disciplined for inappropriate touching.”
“Nobody cares about the truth. Everybody just cares about drama,” Taylor told WISN 12 News.
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