A Republican Chairman Raped His Daughter for Years. He Just Got 410 Years in Prison.
Bo Dresner served as a precinct chair and sergeant-at-arms for the Hays County Republican Party. He was also raping his own daughter.
In March 2024, two years ago, a Texas judge sentenced Dresner to 410 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to 65 counts of continuous sexual abuse of multiple children and possession of child pornography with intent to promote.
The Case
The investigation began in 2019 after one of Dresner’s daughters told someone he was sexually abusing her. While that investigation was underway, a Hays County sheriff’s deputy stopped Dresner on his way to the airport. He was holding a one-way ticket to Armenia, a country with no extradition agreement with the United States.
Investigators later found that a second child living in Dresner’s home had also been molested. A forensic search of his electronic devices turned up hundreds of thousands of images of child pornography, along with internet searches for countries that would not extradite him back to face charges.
A jury trial began on March 4, 2024. On the first day of testimony, after the jury had already been sworn in, Dresner changed his plea to guilty on all 65 counts. The jury was dismissed, and a punishment hearing stretched over several days, with testimony from one of his biological daughters and the other child who had lived in his home.
Judge Gary Steel handed down four consecutive 75-year sentences for the counts of continuous sexual abuse of a child, then stacked additional sentences of 10 to 20 years on top for the remaining 61 child pornography counts. The total came to 410 years.
He Had Been Reported Before
This was not the first time Dresner had been accused of abusing a child, and it was not the first time the system failed to stop him.
In 2005, he pleaded guilty to assaulting a 15-year-old in Minnesota. That sentence was reduced. In 2012, one of the victims in this case had already made allegations against him. Child Protective Services got involved. The matter was never fully investigated by law enforcement, and the child was sent back to live in Dresner’s home.
Seven more years passed before he was finally stopped.
What This Says
Dresner held a position of trust and leadership inside the Hays County Republican Party while systematically abusing children in his own home, hoarding hundreds of thousands of images of exploited children, and planning his escape to a country that would shield him from accountability.
He was reported once, in 2012, and the system sent the victim back to him anyway.
District Attorney Kelly Higgins praised the prosecutors who finally secured justice, and the office says it will continue working to hold abusers accountable. That work came too late for the years between 2012 and 2019, when warning signs were already on record and nothing was done.
Dresner will spend the rest of his life in prison. The children he abused will live with what he did to them for the rest of theirs.