John Marsh

A former South Warren High School instructional assistant and coaching volunteer was ordered to report to jail Tuesday evening after being sentenced for having improper contact with a student.

John Adam Marsh, 29, of Scottsville, will spend 365 days in Allen County Detention Center as part of an agreement in which he pleaded guilty in Warren Circuit Court to three counts of second-degree unlawful transaction with a minor and one count of custodial interference.

Marsh will be eligible for work release after serving 180 days. 

After completing his jail time, Marsh will be on probation for five years and faces 10 years of incarceration if he violates the terms of his probation.

Marsh came to the attention of authorities in 2014, when the student’s stepfather found Marsh wearing socks and boxer shorts in a bathroom in the student’s house.

According to court records, the student’s mother had heard a noise coming from the teenager’s bedroom around 12:30 a.m. on May 14, 2014.

The stepfather confronted the man, who claimed he was underage and went to school with the student. When the stepfather went to call the Warren County Sheriff’s Office, the man jumped out a second-story window, according to Marsh’s arrest citation.

The stepfather chased the man down the street until he lost sight of him, and when the girl’s mother and stepfather returned to the house, they noticed she had left.

“I kept her from her parents when they were trying to find out where she was,” Marsh said in June when he pleaded guilty.

A search through the student’s phone records and Facebook page enabled her mother and stepfather to identify Marsh as the man in the house, and Marsh turned himself in to deputies two days after the incident, according to court records.

Law enforcement charged Marsh originally with seven counts of first-degree unlawful transaction with a minor, seven counts of third-degree rape, seven counts of third-degree burglary and one count each of custodial interference and third-degree sodomy.

Marsh, who was a volunteer assistant boys’ basketball coach at SWHS, reached the plea agreement with prosecutors in June, admitting in court to providing hydrocodone to the student on one occasion for her to use and to being in her presence on two other occasions when she used hydrocodone.

A lawsuit brought against Marsh and Warren County Public Schools by the student’s family is ongoing in Warren Circuit Court.

In the suit, Marsh is accused of engaging in inappropriate contact with the student on Twitter before the interactions progressed to a physical relationship.

According to court records, Marsh would sneak into the student’s residence after dark and leave before her parents awakened.

— Follow courts reporter Justin Story on Twitter @jstorydailynews or visit bgdailynews.com.