Bolivar teacher facing felony charges tells Highway Patrol she had "intense sexual attraction" to 16-year-old student

When Tania Dickey-Driskill released the first in a series of webinar videos for teachers in July, the Bolivar High School science and engineering teacher said the purpose was to enable teachers to "motivate (students) to do the deep learning we know they need to be doing."

Polk County officials allege Driskill had a different kind of "deep learning" in mind than what she was promoting on her video.

Seven months after the video was posted on YouTube, Driskill, 44, a veteran educator with more than two decades in the classroom has been placed on leave and is under house arrest charged with attempted statutory rape, attempted endangering the welfare of a child and stalking, all felonies, in connection with what she told Missouri Highway Patrol investigators was a very intense sexual attraction to a 16-year-old student.





Driskill posted a $15,000 bond with the stipulations that she does not go on Bolivar School District property or be with any child under the age of 18 unless there is supervision, with the exception of her own child. She is required to wear an electronic monitoring device and to stay at her residence, except for medical treatment, court appearances, attorney conferences or employment that has been verified with the Polk County Prosecuting Attorney's office.

Her next court appearance is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday, March 11.

The charges against Driskill are detailed in the probable cause statement:

On February 26, 2020, I was contacted by the mother of a minor child who told me she had seen some disturbing sexually suggestive messages on her son's iPhone in a social media application called Tik Tok.

Myself, (Trooper E. Tyrell) Sergeant Michael Bracker and Master Sergeant Scott Rawson contacted the minor child and his parents at their residence in Polk County, Missouri.

The child told us about how Dickey-Driskill had been messaging him on the social media application TikTok. The child told us Dickey-Driskill had started sending him sexually suggestive text messages through the Tik-Tok application messaging feature for about two days and the messages had started the day before.

The child said he did not solicit these messages from Dickey-Driskill, he did not want to receive them, he was very upset about receiving them, and they were affecting his mental health and anxiety.

I reviewed all of the messages that were on the child's phone in the TikTok application that were from the user name "Tania Driskill." This "Tania Driskill" account also had a profile picture of Tania Dickey-Driskill that I recognized as being Tania Dickey-Driskill from her driver license photograph and from Google Image searching her name associated to the Bolivar School District.

The messages are very sexually suggestive towards the child. The messages from Dickey-Driskill explain how she is extremely sexually excited by the thought of the child and how she is very "turned on" by him.

She says things like, "So what you're saying, to be clear, is that you definitely don't want to f--- my brains out?"









Dickey-Driskill also sent several sexually suggestive poems to the child. One of these poems was titled "#29 Still Burning." The poem contained the following:

"I'm getting better. Day by day. I'll be okay. But I still get hot, when you get near me. And I want to taste your breath. Feel flesh on flesh. Makes me wet. Just thinking about. And I wish I could use you. Just one time. But I can't use, someone so beautiful, because then I'd lose. You. And me. So it's best that I leave you be. A teenage boy. Chasing dreams."

After obtaining consent fro the child and the child's parents, I took over the child's TikTok account and started messaging Dickey-Driskill myself as if I was the child. I attempted to steer the conversation to a meeting for sex with Dickey-Driskill, however the conversation never went that way and no meeting was discussed.

The child had also previously stated there was never a meeting discussed for sex. The texting conversation ended between Dickey-Driskill and I that night with "Good night."

The next day, February 27, 2020, the child's iPhone had 10 messages from Dickey-Driskill in the TikTok application.

One of these messages was another poem entitled "#32 I'm a Selfish Bitch." The poem stated the following:

"Opened my eyes and remembered you. And I got a rush. Like a lush. I drink up those thoughts of you. And I never wanna top. Started to touch myself. But then I felt, The pain, The truth, Of never having, All of you, I don't want to hurt you. Or me. Or anyone in between. And I probably, Should have, Kept this secret to myself. Inside my head. On a dusty shelf, Instead, I fed. You. My dirty mind. And you wanted seconds. Walked right in. To the fantasy. And if I was your mother, I would tell you to run, now. And don't look back."

On February 27, 2020, at approximately 0730 hours, Sergeant Michael Bracker and I waited in the high school parking lot for Dickey-Driskill to arrive at work. When Dickey-Driskill arrived at work, we approached her and asked if we could speak with her, which she agreed.

After Dickey-Driskill was advised of her Miranda rights and agreed to speak with us, she admitted to messaging with the child on TikTok. She said the messages were mostly fantasy, but the sexual attraction was real and very intense.

She denied ever trying to meet with the child for sex and said he would have to be at least 17 years old before she would even start to think about actually having sex with him.

Dickey-Driskill said she knew what she was doing was wrong, but tried to blame the child for instigating it. When I told her, "But he's 16," she said that was a problem.

Dickey-Driskill also told the child several times to delete he messages and not to tell anybody about them because of the possible repercussions. In one message, Dickey-Driskill said, "So I literally used a bag of tricks to pull you in. That is manipulation and using my power to control you. I'm sorry about that. 

I did it on purpose.