How on earth does it become right in anyone’s mind to indict a 60-year-old with a spotless professional reputation on possession of child pornography simply for doing his job?

Who can justify an employer abandoning a manager who faces criminal charges for doing what his boss told him to do?

And how can we get past all this sexting silliness – the modern incarnation of reefer madness – that caused it all?

“These charges are so toxic and incendiary,” Diane Curling told Wired. “Children need to be made aware of the dangers of sexting, but to intimidate public education officials and try to make it a felony to even touch something like this is terrifying.  . . . If we are not careful, we will find ourselves with a new McCarthy era. ”

Curling should know. She’s married to the high school assistant principal who spent almost a year battling accusations that destroyed his finances and his reputation.

And all because he did what the principal told him to do – look into rumors that students were distributing nude pictures of themselves via cell phone.

It was bad enough when officials charged teens in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as child pornographers for taking photos of themselves.

Officials in Loudon County, Virgina – on the Maryland border, just east of the District of Columbia – upped the ante when they charged Freedom High School Vice Principal Ting-Yi Oei with misdemeanor failure to support child abuse.

When Oei refused to resign, they had him indicted on felony child pornography charges.

The whole thing started in March 2008 when the school’s principal asked Oei to look into the sexting rumors.

He found one student with a picture on his cell phone – an image of the torso of a teen Oei could not identify, wearing only underpants, her arms mostly covering her breasts. While that might be exciting stuff to teens, it’s no worse than the average Victoria’s Secret ad, and it’s not pornography.

That’s what Oei thought, too. He reported that back to the principal, who told him to save the image for future reference. Oei had the student send the photo to his cell phone, then had the student help transfer the image to his office computer.

Case closed until the student was suspended for an unrelated incident two weeks later. Revoke the suspension or I’m calling the police, the student’s mother threatened.

Oei didn’t, and she did. A few days later, the police showed up. A few months later, Oei was charged with failure to report child abuse.

What child abuse? That’s what Oei wondered, too.

He couldn’t identify the subject in the picture, didn’t even know if she was a minor, so he had no one to report about. And, once again, the picture was not pornographic. Curiously, even the sheriff’s department admitted that the day Oei was charged.

“It does not rise to the level of a criminal case,” a department spokesman told The Washington Post in May 2007.

That didn’t stop overzealous prosecutor James Plowman from seeking, and obtaining, the child pornography indictment. Oei was arrested in August.

Oei took out a second mortgage on his home so he could pay legal costs. The district let him keep his job, but reassigned him away from students. Otherwise, there was no financial help for Oei until two teachers’ unions stepped in with loans and grants that covered 30 percent of his costs.

In March, the case was dismissed. The judge ruled that the photo wasn’t pornographic. Gee, wasn’t that what the sheriff’s department had said almost a year earlier?

“I still ask myself: Did anyone benefit from all this?” Oei wrote in The Washington Post two weeks after the case was dropped.

The district, which paid an administrator to not run a school for almost a seven months, certainly didn’t.

The taxpayers of Loudon County, who footed the bill for a frivolous prosecution, certainly didn’t.

And neither did educators through out the country, who have to be left wondering what exactly they’re supposed to do in such cases. The judge, you see, never ruled on Oei’s actions, but only on whether the image was pornography.

If I were a teacher or principal, I’d err on the side of not hearing “you have the right to remain silent” and report anything and everything, no matter how small and silly, to the police.

It beats having your booking mug plastered all over the Web on sites that label you a perv.

Loudon County, Stop Wasting America’s Time, and trashing people’s reputations, with this nonsense.

Make that two SWATs, because you know some “tough on crime” type elsewhere is going to find inspiration in this sad, sad incident.

Copyright 2009 Debra Legg. All rights reserved.

Know of someone who deserves a SWAT? Click here to make a nomination.

Similar Posts:

None Found

Popularity: 55% [?]