The Connecticut substitute school teacher who exposed 11 and 12-year-old students to porn in the classroom — unintentionally, she says, because of malware on an infected PC — may now go to jail. If her claims are true, she'll be the first American ever jailed for having had the misfortune of being forced to use a buggy school computer, with incompetent or nonexistent tech support from that school's administration despite repeated requests for help.
From the New York Times story excerpted below, it sure sounds like the school administrators bungled the hell out of this one, and are now scapegoating Julie Amero instead of fessing up to their own failure to protect children:
Ms. Amero's husband, Wes Volle, was emphatic in saying she was clueless about computers and was in over her head once the pop-ups began. Mr. Volle, a graphics designer, accused the school system of sacrificing his wife to deflect attention from its own failure to install effective filters on its computers.
"The computer was infected long before Julie walked into that room," he said. No other staff members in the southeastern Connecticut district have been charged or are expected to be charged.
During the trial, Robert Hartz, the information services manager for Norwich's schools, said the computer's filters that would have blocked such ads were not fully operational, since they had lacked the proper updated information for several weeks.
In an interview, Pam Aubin, superintendent of the Norwich schools, said that Mr. Hartz had ordered an upgrade, but that the supplier had sent it to the wrong e-mail address, using "B" for Bob rather than "R" for Robert in Mr. Hartz's name.
reg-free NYT Link.
Brian Krebs at the Washington Post interviewed Ms. Amero, and has a thorough, updated writeup on the case here: Link (Thanks, Robin)
Previously:
Reader comments: Robin Hendrickson says,
This exact same thing has happened to me in my classroom. Luckily, I knew how to close the flurry of porn windows (it still took a little while) and my students aren't as young. The computers now in most classrooms are more powerful (and vulnerable) than people realize, and the fact that this hapless sub is facing jail time is absurd. They are treating her as though she walked in and said "Today, children, we're going to learn about gang bangs. Now gather 'round the monitor!"
