A former Gloucester County teacher accused of sexually assaulting a middle school student continued exchanging thousands of often sexually explicit texts with him after he went to high school, according to prosecutors.
In one of those exchanges — included in 7,500 pages of texts gathered by investigators — the former student wrote that the teacher left him mentally broken.
“You destroyed things inside of me. You stripped me of my innocence,” he said in a text.
Ashley A. Fisler, 36, of Washington Township, was arrested last week after the former student told investigators she sexually assaulted him multiple times, according to the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s Office.
Fisler worked as a teacher at Orchard Valley Middle School in Washington Township at the time but is no longer employed anywhere as an educator, prosecutors said.
She appeared via video from jail Wednesday for a detention hearing, but a decision on whether she will remain behind bars until trial was pushed to Thursday.
The student went to police in January, prosecutors said. Fisler gave a statement to investigators last month denying the allegations.
Defense attorney Rocco Cipparone argued in court that the prosecution has no evidence of the alleged crimes and is relying on old texts to make its case.
“The selective, salacious texts that were recited by the prosecution lack context,” he said.
Ashley Fisler
The victim, now an adult, described sexual assaults that occurred on at least four occasions in Fisler’s vehicle and her classroom while he was a middle school student in 2021 and 2022, authorities said.
The claims are backed up by 7,500 pages of text messages between Fisler and the victim, Gloucester County Assistant Prosecutor Kylie Finley said Wednesday.
Those messages — in which Fisler reminisced about sexually assaulting the victim — were sent from May 2023 to January of this year, the prosecutor said.
Because of technical limitations, the prosecution does not have messages from the years when the alleged assaults occurred, Finley said.
“These text messages show not only the level of the grooming and manipulation by this defendant, but they also corroborate multiple times over, the sexual relationship disclosed by this victim, including the specific sexual acts that the victim disclosed to police during his interview,” Finley said.
Though she was no longer the victim’s teacher and the assaults ended in 2022, Fisler continued texting the student after he went to high school and those messages highlight her ongoing illegal conduct with a minor, the prosecutor said.
“In December of 2023, the victim confides in the defendant that he’s struggling in school because he’s getting erections more frequently in school. And the defendant’s response was quote, ‘Oh my God, that’s fantastic,’” Finley said.
In another communication, Fisler offered to buy a sex toy for the teenager, the prosecutor said.
Fisler showed little emotion as she listened to the testimony via the video link from jail on Wednesday.
She’s charged with six counts of first-degree sexual assault of a minor, one count of second-degree endangering the welfare of a child and one count of second-degree official misconduct.
Allegedly incriminating photos sent between Fisler and the victim in the recovered texts could not be retrieved.
“We can’t actually see the embedded images in these text messages, but we can see when an image is being sent, and we can see the context,” the prosecutor said.
In one of those messages, Fisler told the student to send her photos of his genitals, Finley said.
The texts also show the teen discussing his mental health struggles. He told Fisler that her conduct damaged him, and he called her manipulative and selfish, Finley said.
“On January 20th of 2025, the victim told the defendant, quote, ‘I’ve had to try really hard to rebuild the things you broke inside of me. You destroyed things inside of me. You stripped me of my innocence,’” the prosecutor said.
Finley then described Fisler’s response.
“The defendant admits that she hurt him countless times and says, quote, ‘I take the blame for all of this,’” Finley said. “She even admits that she put him in positions that she shouldn’t have and says, ‘I feel like I forced you to grow up abnormally quick.’”
Fisler continued to contact the victim in January of this year when he tried to break off communication, Finley said.
She also tried to hide evidence of her conduct by deleting old text threads, telling police she did that because she frequently has affairs, the prosecutor said.
Cipparone, Fisler’s attorney, said all of the texts cited by prosecutors were sent years after the alleged crimes and there was no evidence presented from the years the alleged assaults occurred.
“What I did not hear the prosecution say is that there are any contemporaneous texts, images, evidence back in 2021 that reveal this alleged conduct,” he said.
Fisler agreed to take a polygraph test but was denied the opportunity, Cipparone said.
He suggested the former student may have a financial motive for his claims, saying he consulted an attorney before contacting police.
In her interview with police, Fisler said she left her teaching job in 2023 because she “blurred the lines with another student,” the prosecution said, but Cipparone said that matter involved nothing illegal.
“Ms. Fisler told the police that the reason she left was because a female student had a hickey on her neck. She asked Ms. Fisler to buy her cover-up makeup so that she wouldn’t get in trouble from her parents,” the lawyer said. “Ms. Fisler did that, and she said, I blurred a line and I decided to leave teaching to pursue other things.”
Fisler, whose maiden name is Sulla, joined the district as a social studies teacher at Orchard Valley Middle School in 2015 according to a district press release that year.
In 2019, two years before the alleged sexual assaults, another of Fisler’s students wrote an essay for a statewide contest describing Fisler as his hero.
He wrote that his teacher was a “protector” who wanted to be sure students felt secure and comfortable at school.
The essay was selected as one of four winning entries and Fisler was celebrated by her district.
In an announcement about the winning essay, Orchard Valley’s principal called Fisler “an energetic, dedicated, hard-working teacher who is passionate about teaching social studies.”
The press release called her “living proof that effective educators can have an immediate, positive and lasting impact on kids.”
The prosecutor also described additional claims about inappropriate communications between Fisler and students.
“At least one other family reported inappropriate communications to the police from the defendant to another child who was her student at the time,” Finley said. “And in September of 2024, the victim told the defendant that another student, a third child, was telling people that a teacher named Mrs. Fisler from middle school sent him bikini pictures.”
In arguing that Fisler should remain in jail, the prosecutor said her conduct demonstrates that she poses a danger to others and that she’s a flight risk because she faces a lengthy prison sentence.
Each aggravated sexual assault charge alone carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Fisler is a nearly lifelong local resident, has strong ties to the area and doesn’t pose a risk if freed, her attorney said.
While a court public safety assessment recommended she remain jailed, Superior Court Judge William Ziegler said he needed time to review relevant case law before making a decision.
The hearing is scheduled to resume Thursday.
Fisler taught in the same district where she once attended school as a student.
She graduated from Washington Township High School in 2007 and earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in education from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck.
Her student teaching experience included four months at Washington Township High School in 2013, according to a resume she posted online.
Fisler’s employment with the district ended in April 2023, the district confirmed.
In June 2023, she launched a business that designs and creates personalized apparel, according to her resume.
As of 2024, she was working part time at her family’s tree care business, the resume said.
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