Ex-wife says Steele was misunderstood

A somewhat different chain of events was told Wednesday by the ex-wife of a registered sex offender who, she says, cried when he denied soliciting sex from an 11-year-old Shelbyville girl in his neighborhood on Friday.

"Nobody knows what went on and what was said other than him, the girl and God," said Janet Hall Reyes, 40, who's living in her brother's house just down the street from the 11-year-old girl, and who agreed to be named in this news story.

"I guess if I'm going to let people know that I'm going to stand behind him, it's best to use my name," Reyes said after providing some photos of herself and Jeffrey Wayne Steele, 36, who's charged with asking his neighbor's daughter if she "wanted to learn how to make a youngin'."

"He has a mental problem," Reyes said. "I've known this the whole time... He's going to Centerstone," a medical facility in Tullahoma.

She and Steele were divorced two years before he was convicted in 1998 in Franklin County on charges that placed him on the state's Sexual Offender Registry.

"I went to see him today and he said 'I didn't mean to say it,'" Reyes said. "But he knows it's wrong to say things, but he denies making that statement.

"He admitted to me that when they started talking [and he said] 'How are you doing? Learn anything in school?'"

Such statements are consistent with the police report.

What's not included in the official report is a part of the conversation about what academic subjects are difficult, she said.

Reyes said the girl told Steele, "'I have a couple of hard subjects."

"And he said, he does too and his 'hardest subject is sex education,'" Reyes reported.

"I don't know where that statement came from," Reyes said of the alleged statement from Steele about whether the child wanted to learn how to make babies.

"He looked me in the eyes and said, 'I promise you, I didn't make that statement.' He was crying and I believe in my heart that he's telling the truth," Reyes said.

She says Steele is "a slow thinker. His process to comprehend things is slower. He reacts before he thinks about what he says.

"I'm going to stand behind Jeff no matter what," Reyes said.

She says her brother won't let Steele return to the house and that she knows of no way to afford $300 for a bail bondsman to get him released on the $3,000 bond that's holding him in the Bedford County Jail.