Indianapolis teacher learns fate for filming ‘Fight Club’-style classroom brawls he encouraged

An Indianapolis elementary school teacher who filmed “Fight Club”-style brawls he encouraged in his classroom has been sentenced to two years in prison.

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Julious Johnican, 25, was sentenced Thursday over what the horrified mom of one of the young students filmed called in a lawsuit a “reprehensible ‘Fight Club’ type of discipline within his classroom.”

The brawls came to light weeks after Johnican started teaching at the Montessori school in the fall of 2023 — emerging thanks to a wild mistake at a parent-teacher conference, Fox59 reported.

He had been talking to the concerned parents of a 7-year-old student with special needs when he tried to show them a video he thought would reassure them — instead showing a video of the parent’s son being battered by another young student.

The video showed a classmate repeatedly punching their son while shouting, “Don’t mess with me.”

“That’s right. You get to him,” Johnican said, appearing to encourage the fight. “I know you want to get him when he does things.”

It’s not clear when the video was filmed, but the boy complained to his mom he had been “attacked, bullied, threatened and injured in the classroom” between August and November 2023 — and that the abuse was “being done at the instruction of the teacher.”

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Johnican quit his teaching gig before he could be fired. The boys mom later won a $1.2 million payout from her lawsuit.

The former teacher pleaded guilty on Aug. 4 to a level 6 felony – the lowest level of felony in Indiana — for neglect of a dependent and was sentenced Thursday to two years, just under the maximum sentence of 2 1/2 years in prison.

Prosecutor Ryan Mears said the two-year prison sentence “holds [Johnican] accountable.”

“Schools are supposed to be safe spaces where children can learn, grow and feel protected,” he said. “The defendant abused the trust placed in him as an educator and subjected vulnerable children to the unthinkable.”

However, an attorney for the family of the boy filmed being attacked questioned if even prison time would register with the teacher.

“I don’t think, from the impression I got today, that he understands the gravity [of his crimes],” she said. “’He should by now, but I don’t think he does.”

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