San Angelo Man Jailed for Filming Interludes with His Minor Girlfriend

SAN ANGELO— A San Angelo man has been arrested for sexually assaulting a child after law enforcement officers seized his phone.

John Vance Brenneis, 20, has been arrested and charged with sexual assault of a child.  Brenneis was allegedly 17 when he began dating a 13-year-old girl and recording their sexual encounters on his phone.  

According to court documents, on May 17, 2023, officers executed a search warrant on a residence at the 8800 block of Swain Road. This search warrant was not in relation to the sexual assault case. The victim’s cellphone was seized as evidence and was forensically downloaded at the Tom Green County Sheriff’s Office.

Investigators had two individuals provide statements that the victim and Brenneis were in a dating relationship and were boyfriend and girlfriend.

On May 24, 2023, a forensic interview was conducted on the victim at the Hope House in San Angelo due to a separate investigation. The victim said that she had a boyfriend named Jonathan and that they had been dating for almost two years.

The CPS worker provided the investigator with a typed statement regarding the interview with the victim as part of a different investigation. The victim said to the CPS worker that she and her 20-year-old boyfriend, Brenneis, lived together and started dating when he was 17 years old.

The victim’s mother stated that she knew Brenneis and her daughter were in a dating relationship. The mother gave consent for the victim and Brenneis to have sex and knew they were having sexual intercourse. She also told CPS that the two had been dating since the victim was 15.

Investigators reviewed the downloaded files from the cellphone that was seized and saw several videos that depicted Brenneis and the child victim having sex. Some of the videos were dated for March 24, 2022, when the victim would have been about 15 years old.

Other videos located were dated on April 11, 2023, that depicted Brenneis sexually assaulting the victim. The investigator identified a tattoo on Brenneis’s hand in the videos.

Brenneis was arrested and booked into the Tom Green County Detention Facility on June 14, 2023, for the sexual assault of a child. He is currently an inmate being held on $50,000 bond.