The outside investigator hired by Truett McConnell University’s Board of Trustees, Richard Hyde, told Now Habersham in a text on Wednesday that he is progressing in his work looking into a scandal at the university and will present his findings thus far at the end of this month.
“Still working on the investigation,” Hyde wrote. “Several witnesses are unavailable until the end of the month. However, I plan on presenting an update to the board of trustees at their regularly scheduled meeting on September 25,” he added.
Hyde, of Phoenix Research, LLC in Atlanta, is also affiliated with a prominent Atlanta law firm. He was hired by the TMU trustees after a sex scandal broke in the spring.
TMU alumna, former soccer player, and former assistant soccer coach Hayle Swinson, who alleges she was groomed and raped, beginning in 2009, by former TMU Vice President Bradley Reynolds, brought her charges to light this last May, in a wide-ranging interview with a Christian podcast. Now Habersham and other news outlets picked up on the story, learning that White County Sheriff Rick Kelley initially declined in 2024 to arrest or prosecute Reynolds when Swinson first reported the alleged abuse, and did not share the report with the regional district attorney’s office. At the time, Kelley said he did not believe the allegations would withstand judicial scrutiny, in part because of a state law seemingly excluding colleges and universities for prosecution over sexual relationships between adults.
DA left open possibility of prosecution
Enotha Judicial Circuit District Attorney, Jeff Langley was traveling between offices on Wednesday and Thursday and could not be reached for a comment.
He had previously said that his own investigation would take until at least the end of this month. He had not yet decided on whether he would present his eventual findings to a Grand Jury for possible indictment.
Langley earlier said that he was open to the possibility that he might prosecute former TMU Vice President Bradley Reynolds or other wrongdoers, if any.
TMU President Emir Caner was placed on administrative leave from his position by the TMU trustees on June 6th and replaced temporarily by Acting President John O. Yarbrough, a TMU alumnus and administrator.
Yarbrough did not return phone calls seeking comment on the situation this week.
Alleged abuse occurred over several years
Reynolds’ alleged abuse of Swinson occurred over several years, mostly in the basement of his home, off-campus, during private religious counseling sessions, according to Swinson’s podcast interview. Swinson also sometimes slept over in the Reynolds’ basement, behind what she wrongly believed to be a locked door, she said. It was on those occasions when the worst abuse occurred, she said in her original interview.
Swinson and her attorney offered more than 350 emails, many of them heavily sexual in nature, from Reynolds to Swinson. Some seemed to argue that Swinson had a religious obligation to submit. Reynolds had initially denied he was the author of those emails, but Kelley’s staff was able to determine they came from the vice president’s private email account.
Swinson has declined to speak to media, apart from the podcast where she first shared her story and a recent news article with the AJC. She responded to a message sent through her website portal several weeks ago to say she would need to think about whether she wanted to comment further, but has not subsequently contacted Now Habersham.
As reported previously, Bradley Reynolds, contacted in June, identified himself, but then hung up on a reporter. Reynolds was located at a sandwich shop in Texas, where he was reportedly working as of early June.
