Former Ohio high school girls’ basketball coach accused of having sex with students indicted

WORTHINGTON — A former Ohio girls’ basketball coach accused of having sex with two of the students on his team has been formally charged.

Jason Dawson, 35, was indicted earlier this month on 10 counts of sexual battery, according to our news partners at WBNS in Columbus.

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Dawson was arrested in North Carolina last month and has since been extradited to Columbus.

As News Center 7 previously reported, the alleged actions started when Dawson was the head coach for the girls’ basketball team at Worthington Christian High School.

In December 2023, a woman was interviewed by a Columbus Division of Police detective. She claimed to have been in a relationship with Dawson from her sophomore year in 2019 through September 2023.

She also told the detective that the relationship became sexual in January 2021 when she was 16 years old and that the pair had sex about 100 times.

The woman said Dawson, who was also a teacher at the school, recorded them having sex multiple times. He would then send the videos to her.

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Three of the videos were able to be extracted from her phone by the Columbus Digital Forensics Unit. Two of the videos showed the woman and Dawson having sex when she was 17 years old.

WBNS reported on Wednesday that Dawson has since been accused of associating himself with a different girl who was also on the basketball team. He allegedly had sex with that girl in November 2020 when she was 16 years old.

Dawson was the coach at Worthington Christian from 2019 to 2022. He then moved to North Carolina.

Dawson had a scheduled hearing in Delaware County Municipal Court on Wednesday but did not appear. A new court date has not been set, WBNS reported.

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