A Laredo Teacher Drew 33 Years. It Took a Parent’s Phone Call to Stop Her.
On July 1, 2026, a Webb County jury in Laredo convicted former middle-school teacher Adriana Mariel Rullan, 30, of continuously sexually abusing a 13-year-old student — and assessed a 33-year prison term she is not eligible to shorten through parole. Judge Beckie Palomo (D) of the 341st District Court pronounced the sentence in open court.
The case did not start with a school safeguard, a background check, or an administrator’s tip. It started on November 27, 2023, when the boy’s parents walked into the United Independent School District’s own police department and reported what they had found. A forensic search of the child’s phone did the rest.
Rullan’s conviction is one data point in a statewide surge. Texas opened 1,465 “inappropriate relationship” investigations against educators in fiscal 2026 — more than double the year before — and the state’s new misconduct dashboard logged more than 13,000 reports in eight months. The 33 years is the accountability. The pattern behind it is the story.
- 33yearssentence for continuous sexual abuse of a child — not parole-eligible (Webb County DA · Fox News)
- 3felony countscontinuous sexual abuse, indecency with a child, improper educator-student relationship (DA's Office)
- Nov 272023the day the victim's parents reported it to United ISD police (DA's Office)
- 1,465TX cases"inappropriate relationship" educator investigations in FY2026, up from 579 (Texas Education Agency)
After a two-day trial in the 341st District Court, a Webb County jury convicted Adriana Mariel Rullan on all three felony counts she faced: continuous sexual abuse of a child under 14, indecency with a child by sexual contact, and an improper relationship between an educator and a student. According to the Webb County District Attorney’s Office, jurors returned the guilty verdicts after deliberating less than two hours.
In the punishment phase, the jury assessed 33 years on the most serious count — the continuous-abuse charge — with the individual counts running 10 and 13 years (outlets differ on which count carried which term), all to be served concurrently within the 33-year sentence. Jurors also imposed $20,000 in fines. Judge Beckie Palomo (D) read the sentence aloud. The case was prosecuted by the office of District Attorney Isidro “Chilo” Alaniz (D), who covers Webb and Zapata Counties as the elected DA for the 49th Judicial District.
This is a conviction, not an allegation. Rullan pleaded not guilty and contested the charges through trial; the jury rejected her defense. There is no plea deal here, no deferred adjudication, and — on the lead count — no path to early release. In a system where child-sex cases often end in negotiated pleas, a full jury conviction with a 33-year floor is the outcome accountability advocates say too rarely arrives.
The timeline is short and pointed. On November 27, 2023, the victim’s parents contacted the United Independent School District Police Department to report an inappropriate relationship between their child and a teacher at Antonio Gonzalez Middle School in Laredo. Investigators obtained the student’s cellphone; a forensic examination recovered electronic communications that documented the relationship and, prosecutors said, supplied the core of the case. Arrest warrants for Rullan were served on December 20, 2023.
That detail is the quiet indictment inside an otherwise clean prosecution. The abuse was surfaced by a family, then proven by a forensic download — the digital trail a middle schooler leaves on a phone. Nothing in the public record suggests a background check, a district reporting system, or a colleague’s tip is what caught it. By the time the case reached a courtroom, the evidence was overwhelming: over two days of testimony, prosecutors called six witnesses and entered dozens of exhibits, including text messages, photographs, and video recordings.
The lead charge — continuous sexual abuse of a young child, under Texas Penal Code § 21.02 — is not an ordinary felony. The Legislature classified it as a first-degree offense carrying a punishment range of 25 to 99 years, or life, and it stripped away the usual off-ramps: no probation, no deferred adjudication, and, under Government Code § 508.145, no parole. Outside of capital murder, Texas prosecutors describe it as the most serious charge a defendant can face.
That is why the number matters. Because parole is unavailable on the § 21.02 count, Rullan’s 33-year sentence is served day for day — not a headline figure that quietly shrinks to a fraction at a parole hearing. She would be in her sixties before the term expires. The concurrent 10- and 13-year terms on the lesser counts fold into that timeline rather than extending it, and the $20,000 in fines rides on top.
A Webb County jury handed former Gonzalez Middle School teacher Adriana Rullan 33 years in prison on the most serious charge — continuous sexual abuse of a child younger than 14 — after convicting her on all three counts.
The uncomfortable question a case like this leaves behind is not whether the offender was punished — she was — but why the school system was the last to know. The abuse continued through phone messages between Rullan and the 13-year-old victim, and the mechanism that eventually stopped it was a parent who went to the police, not an internal safeguard that flagged the contact early. That gap is exactly what Texas lawmakers spent the last year trying to close.
In 2025 the Legislature passed Senate Bill 571, which requires the State Board for Educator Certification to temporarily suspend the certificate of an educator arrested for certain felonies and expands who and what must be reported. A companion measure, House Bill 4623, opened a narrow door to hold a school district civilly liable when it acts with gross negligence, recklessness, or intentional misconduct in hiring or supervising an employee later accused of abusing a student. The state also created its first Inspector General for Educator Misconduct and, in June 2026, launched a public dashboard so parents can see the numbers for themselves.
A South Texas teacher was sentenced to 33 years for sexually abusing a student — the latest in a wave of Texas educator sex-crime cases now being tracked on the state's new misconduct dashboard.
The dashboard’s early numbers are their own kind of alarm. The Texas Education Agency logged 13,390 misconduct reports between September 2025 and the spring of 2026 — averaging more than 1,600 a month, more than double the prior fiscal year’s pace. Of roughly 9,724 educator investigations opened in that window, the agency says 78.5% involved direct harm to students.
The sexual-misconduct slice is climbing fastest. “Inappropriate relationship” investigations rose from 579 in fiscal 2025 to 1,465 in fiscal 2026. Investigations into overt sexual abuse — assault and lewd acts — went from 303 to 441 over the same period, and the monthly rate of new sex-related investigations roughly tripled, from about 86 to 249. Since September, the State Board for Educator Certification has handed down 595 sanctions, 457 of them against teachers, and 485 people have been added to the state’s Do Not Hire Registry, barring them from any Texas public or private school.
Some of that increase reflects better reporting rather than more predators — SB 571 widened the net of what counts as reportable, so cases that once went unlogged now show up. But the trend line on the most serious category, hands-on sexual abuse, is not a paperwork artifact. It is more children, in more districts, harmed by the adults entrusted with them. The Rullan verdict is what accountability looks like at the end of that pipeline; the dashboard is a measure of how long the pipeline has become.
During the sentencing phase, the person the system exists to protect spoke for himself. The victim, 13 at the time of the abuse, told jurors what it had cost him — in his own words, before they set the number that would follow Rullan into prison.
“It cost him his friendships, his sense of self, and nearly his life.”
The victim's statement to jurors, sentencing phase — as reported by Fox News and KGNS
The accountability in this case is real and it is severe: a full conviction, a 33-year term with no parole, fines, and a permanent bar from ever teaching in Texas again. Prosecutors did their job and jurors did theirs. What the case cannot undo is the years it took a child’s family, rather than a school, to stop it — and the thousands of open Texas investigations that say this was not an isolated failure of watch.
District Attorney Isidro “Chilo” Alaniz (D) — 49th Judicial District (Webb & Zapata Counties); his office prosecuted the case to a full jury conviction.
Judge Beckie Palomo (D) — 341st District Court, Webb County; presided over the trial and pronounced the 33-year sentence.
United Independent School District — the Laredo district that employed Rullan at Antonio Gonzalez Middle School; its police department received the parents’ November 2023 report.
