Survivor of sexual assault from former teacher shares her story
VENN
POWHATAN COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) -- Isabella Hoffman started her final year at Powhatan High School like any average teenager: playing field hockey in the fall, managing the basketball team on the side and being an active member of her church.
“I was almost always outside, playing sports, going to school," she said.
At just 17 years old, gearing up to graduate, her life was changed forever.
The school's band director at the time was Andrew Snead. He's currently serving an eight-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2023 to eight counts of sex-related crimes involving teens.
Andrew Clinton Snead Booking Photo (Photo Courtesy of the Powhatan County Sheriff's Office)
Hoffman was his first victim to come forward.
Now, at 20 years old, she's still living in Powhatan County, where she was born and raised.
Flipping through an old yearbook, Hoffman stopped at a photo of Snead in the band room. She said she first met him through friends.
“I would hang out in the band room because that was where everybody really was that I was friends with at the time," she said. "And Andrew was always there.”
Plus, Hoffman's then-boyfriend's guardian was Snead's brother, who lived with Snead.
“I would go to the house all the time," Hoffman said. "Like, I was always there. It was just the three of us all the time.”
It was when the two of them were alone that things began to escalate, according to Hoffman. She reportedly recalled numerous instances, including Snead making sexual jokes toward her at school, saving her a spot behind the school where the teachers would park, leaving school to run errands for him, taking his credit card to buy them food and even picking up his dry cleaning.
"I was like, ‘Oh, I’m just helping out, it’ll make him happy,'" she said.
She said it was around April 2022 when he started coming onto her strongly. When Snead would take her into his office, she said he would pressure her into doing things and kiss her.
“I knew the whole time something was wrong," Hoffmann said. She emphasized that Snead never told her directly to keep their relationship a secret.
"He actually did very well of never saying that," she said.
Instead, Hoffman said Snead would place his fingers over his lips and shush her whenever they were alone.
Hoffman said that toward the end of the school year, she confided in a friend about what was going on. That friend then went to the school administrators.
Snead was suspended for 10 days, but when Hoffman was called in and questioned about it, she denied all of it. The truth didn’t come out until June, when her mom could tell the secret was eating away at her.
"My mom knew," Hoffman said. "She was like, ‘you’re not acting like yourself. There’s something wrong.’ I was really depressed, really anxious. I wouldn’t talk to anybody. I basically stopped talking to everybody in my family, almost.”
Hoffman and her mom went to the Powhatan County Sheriff’s Office the next day.
On June 30, 2022, two days after Hoffman and her mom went to authorities, Snead was arrested and charged with two counts of taking indecent liberties with a child by a person in a supervisory relationship. As deputies continued investigating, they learned he had previously acted inappropriately with multiple minors over several years, going as far back as 2010.
It wasn’t until almost a year later, in June 2023, that Snead accepted a plea deal, finding him guilty of eight sex crimes involving minors.
Even though he's serving an eight-year prison sentence, for Hoffman, it isn’t enough.
"It’s crazy to me that you could get so little time for all the harm- for a lifetime of harm that was caused," she said. “It’s not that it’s scary, but it’s almost like, why would you release somebody that’s just going to come out and do it again? I just worry that it’s going to happen to someone else.”
Hoffman said she’s been to campus several times since Snead started his sentence. She avoids walking past the band room, but wanted to be prepared if she ever needed to be there to help another student going through what she did.
"Anybody that I can help, even if it’s one person, that is why I’m doing this," she said. "If it could’ve happened to me, it can happen to anybody.”
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, but this is something that Hoffman says she will live with forever.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, resources are listed below.
