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- Former Biggs Mayor Robert Brian Bassett got four years and four months in prison.
- Bassett pleaded no contest on Aug. 5 to three felony child sexual abuse charges.
- Bassett was convicted of sexually abusing a high school foreign exchange student.
The former mayor of a small town in Northern California was sentenced Tuesday to four years and four months in prison for sexually abusing an underage high school foreign exchange student he hosted at his home three years ago.
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As part of his sentence, Robert Brian Bassett, 58, was ordered to register with local authorities as a convicted sex offender for 10 years after he is released from prison, the Butte County District Attorney’s Office announced in a news release.
Bassett served a two-year term as mayor of Biggs from 2022 through December 2024, according to the Gridley Herald. Biggs, the Butte County town about 62 miles north of Sacramento, had a population of 1,964 residents in the 2020 census.
Bassett pleaded no contest to three felony child sexual abuse charges on Aug. 5, Butte Superior Court records show. Two additional felony child sexual abuse charges filed against him in July were dropped after he entered his no contest plea last month.
At Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, Judge Michael Deems said the county’s probation department recommended a mid-term prison sentence. Prosecutors said the judge instead sentenced Bassett to the maximum prison term, citing the girl’s vulnerability, Bassett’s “grooming” of the teen and the violation of trust as aggravating factors.
The prosecutor in the child sexual abuse case read a written statement from the victim that detailed her pain and suffering she still experiences, knowing that Bassett violated the trust she placed in him while she was in the United States and thousands of miles away from her family.
The prosecutor told the judge that Bassett groomed the girl for several months before sexually abusing her.
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In July, Bassett was arrested by officers from the Gridley Police Department as they served a search warrant at Bassett’s C Street home in Biggs, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
His arrest was the result of a months-long police investigation of allegations that Bassett engaged in a sexual relationship with the teen foreign exchange student while he was still mayor in 2023.
Prosecutors said detectives contacted the student in her home country, where she revealed that Bassett had sexually abused her on several occasions when she was 17 years old and lived in Bassett’s home.
The police detectives, with help from DA investigators, investigated the allegations. Prosecutors said they gathered corroborating evidence and obtained an arrest warrant for Bassett.
Bassett, who has been in custody since his July 9 arrest, remained at the Butte County Jail awaiting a transfer to prison.
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