High School Teacher Recounts "Sexting" Ordeal That Ruined His Career
Ting-Yi Oei's "sexting" witchhunt story begins about a year ago, when a fellow teacher told him about a rumor that some teens at the school were texting naked self-portraits around to one another.
I called a student I thought likely to have such a picture into my office. In the presence of the school's safety and security official, he quickly admitted that he did. He pulled out his phone and showed us an image of the torso of a woman wearing underpants, with her arms crossed over her breasts. Her head was not in the picture. The 17-year-old student claimed not to know who the young woman was or who had sent him the photo.The story quickly takes a turn for the surreal. Soon, the teacher who claims he sought only to protect the kids he taught was himself charged with possession of child pornography. Read the rest of the saga here: My Students. My Cellphone. My Ordeal. (Washington Post)I immediately took the picture to the principal, who instructed me to transfer it to my office computer in case we needed it later. Being unfamiliar with camera features on cellphones, I asked the school's technology resource teacher for help, but he didn't have an immediate solution. The student then said that he could text the picture to my cellphone. That left the problem of getting it to my computer, whereupon the boy said that I could send the picture to my school e-mail address.
In hindsight, of course, he could have sent it directly to my computer himself. But it never occurred to me that my actions could be regarded as suspect: I was conducting a legitimate school investigation with children's welfare in mind, and I did so in the presence and with the full knowledge of other school officials.
I interviewed more students with the security specialist, but we found no more pictures and were unable to identify the woman in the photo. We concluded that she probably wasn't a student at the school. I reported our findings to the principal and assumed that the matter was closed.
I left the building quickly that day -- the start of spring break -- to join my wife, Diane, at a doctor's office to discuss her upcoming surgery for a potentially malignant tumor. I told her about the sexting photo, but we had other things on our minds. When I returned to school two days after break ended, I confronted a new problem: The boy with the photo on his cell was now in trouble for having pulled a girl's pants down in class (another teen phenomenon known as "flagging"). I informed his mother that I was suspending him, and in the discussion I also told her about the earlier incident. She was outraged that I hadn't reported it to her at the time. She called me at home that night at 10 p.m. and again at 7 a.m. the next morning, agitated and demanding that the suspension be revoked and threatening to involve an attorney. I told her as calmly as I could that the suspension was for the deliberate act of pulling down the girl's pants. A couple of days later, after an appeal hearing with the principal and me, she shouted at me, "I'll see you in court!"
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I wouldn't say his career is ruined but it was an unbelievable ordeal considering how little evidence against him there actually was.
Note to self: Before starting a witch hunt, re-read The Crucible.
@Nanuq, I think it's fair to presume that if you're male, and a high school teacher, and you're charged with posession of child porn or some other pedo-related activity, your career as a teacher is complete toast even if charges are tossed. Particularly in culturally conservative Virginia.
Every now and again, I think to myself- I should go into teaching. I did well enough teaching undergrads; I could teach high school. My parents taught; some of my grandparents taught. I'm sure some of THEIR parents taught, too. It's in the blood.
And then there's stuff like this, and I think to myself- I ain't touching that profession with a ten foot pole.
My problem with this is that he started it. He decided to start rummaging around in students' phones because of a rumor. He could have ignored it. He could have banned phones on campus during class hours. He could have notified the authorities. He could have notified the parents and let them deal with it, but instead he decided to start calling in students to grill them about something which he frankly admits is not child abuse. If it's disrupting school, bust the perpetrators that you catch. If it's illegal, notify the authorities. If it's a rumor, ignore it. You can't play both sides against the middle and not get screwed.
My mother works at a high school. The horror stories she tells are enough to keep me from ever considering teaching at ANY level. I'm forwarding this article to her.
Not to quibble, Xeni, but he seems to indicate in the last paragraph or two that he is set to resume his position.
But, yes, I'd say he suffered a lot of damage to his career.
That said, in cases like this or Julie Amero's, isn't there some kind of civil restitution they can seek? In Amero's case especially it seems the school did not protect her from exposure to what happened (no firewall, expired virus software, etc...)
Its quite amazing, really.
@Antinous... wow, you're extremely close to blaming the victim here. Are you familiar w/ that schools rules and policies? Maybe he was bound by policy to follow through on any such complaint or rumor? God knows what would've happened to him if he hadn't and then a week later the person who's picture was taken ends up raped or something similar.
I think you're assuming way too much. Ironically, I think you're behaving akin to how the prosecutors did.
@Osprey, this is in the vein of why I decided against teaching HS. You have no power and either the parents are non-existent or they blame you for all the horrible things their kids do. At least that's what I saw in my short time as a substitute and have learned from my several friends who teach for a living. I teach p/t in CC and that's fine for me.
Antinous, you've got some great ideas, but unfortunately, it's not that cut & dry. The school my mother works at has banned cell phones, but that doesn't stop the students from texting in the middle of class. As for notifying the parents, well, some parents just don't give a damn. Or, they take any comments from teachers as insults on their parenting skills and refuse to listen - or worse, threaten the teacher, like that woman who shouted "See you in court!" in the article. The teacher was admittedly dealing in a grey area - trying to figure out how old school rules apply to new technology.
@Shane, fair point.
"I was conducting a legitimate school investigation with children's welfare in mind ..."
Um ... no ... you were playing "Keystone Kop" instead of teaching. Instead of doing that, you should have followed the law.
If a teacher suspects a student is trading child porn, the teacher is required by law to call the police, especially in cases where a teacher may suspect a child is a victim of child porn.
The teacher should not launch a "legitimate school investigation," since there is no such thing. In our society, teachers are not empowered to conduct criminal investigations. They are supposed to be too busy teachng to conduct criminal investigations.
Cops, on the other hand, are empowered to conduct criminal investigations, and have time to do it, since they're not spending their time teaching kids how to do math.
This moron got what he deserved, and we are fortunate this clown isn't allowed near our children's brains any longer.
This dolt isn't smart enough to be a teacher.
I used to teach at a k-12 private school, and administrators are pretty much paranoid of any suggestion of inappropriate relations. Case in point, we had a kid (5-6 yo) who was wandering around in our parking lot. One of the teachers went out and got him, then tracked down his parent since he was not one of our students. It seems he'd just wandered away from his mom.
Afterwords we all got a lecture about how we needed to find another teacher or admin to go along with us to go catch the kid, since we might wind up alone with the kid for a few minutes, or might be thought to be a kidnapper, etc.
So if the kid gets hit by a car while we're getting another staff member, does the kid still get injured? It boggles the mind.
I'm with Antinous on this one. Besides, they are teenagers, give them some room.
What's a shame is that there has been so little coverage of this in the local newspapers in Loudoun County. Plowman no longer deserves his job.
All other issues asside... When exactly did teachers get police powers? Or, really, better-than-police powers, as the teacher's own description would almost certainly qualify as an illegal search & seizure if it was a cop who did it.
He's not a teacher. He's an Assistant Principal - a manager. I've worked in management jobs, and I would never have done what he did while dealing with adults. Doing it with adolescents is career suicide. He overstepped his authority. He initiated a witch hunt and he got caught in it himself.
@antinous
Beg to differ. There have been a more than a few instances where schools were granted a sort of sovereignty with regard to civil rights and latitude in discretion as it pertains to ensuring a safe environment. It's fair to assume this man was "institutionalized" toward this reaction.
I'm not saying that's right, it just is, and this case is more a product of old v. new worlds colliding than it is a matter of getting burned by your own stake.
Corporations are very different from schools and people managers are very different from teachers (or assistant principals) and it's specious to compare them directly. Maybe one day we'll realize that students shouldn't have fewer rights on school property than off, but to blame this man for his environment isn't fair.
I don't wish to be antagonistic, but you folks need to read the story a little closer.
A teacher (his subordinate) brought a potential problem to his attention. Ignoring it could have resulted in no end of trouble. Instead he confronted the kid directly about the issue and then followed the instructions of his boss as to what to do.
He investigated the issue, couldn't prove anything bad had happened, reported the issue to his boss and considered it a done deal.
Instead when the boy got in trouble again, this time for pantsing a girl, (which also falls in the area of teenage stupidity) the boy's mom got involved and all of a sudden he's being prosecuted for heinous misdeeds by an over-zealous prosecuting attorney.
There was no witch hunt and turning the matter over to the police wouldn't have worked because he couldn't prove anything wrong had occurred. This was proved out in court, because ultimately the judge ruled that the photo wasn't even pornographic.
So to recap, boy -- wrong, principal -- wrong and a dick, boy's mom -- petty, spiteful and wrong, Ting-Yi Oei -- a Quaker of good standing in the community who tried to do the right thing and got screwed for it.
His career may not be ruined, but his finances certainly are. According to the article, he had to use his entire savings and borrowed large sums of money to pay for his defense. Unfortunately, reckless prosecution civil cases are rarely successful, so despite all charges being dropped, he still has to face a huge fine.
@ daemon
When, exactly? 1969, tinker vs. doe. If behavior disrupts schoolwork and leads to reasonable suspicion, anything students bring to school may be searched. Teachers have the legal right to act in the place of the parent while a student is at school.
So this guy gets his life ruined, but they don't reveal the names to us of either the incompetent crusading prosecutor (who sounds exactly like a complete pederast looking for any opportunity to whitewash himself of his own guilt & fear of discovery), or the incompetent parent-of-the-year lunging at any scrap of an excuse to pin her son's "deviant & precocious sexualization" on, other than the inevitable Just More Lazy Parenting of an Internet-Baby scenario
It boggles my mind that anyone would willingly let an image like this from an underage student (and presumably of an underage student) be placed on his/her personal phone/computer.
I believe the term for this behavior is fail.
This is 2009, right?
For Be Reasonable - the kicker in your post is the sentence "Ignoring it could have resulted in no end of trouble."
If telling the snoopy teacher "So, what business is this of ours?" results in trouble (far from certain), that's the trouble I would pick over the trouble he got into playing "investigator".
@#3 Xeni: Loudoun County is hardly "culturally conservative Virginia." It's the DC exurbs/suburbs, voted 54 percent for Obama and is the land of soccer moms and Dulles Airport. Rednecks are few and far between; you need to drive further south and west for that.
@# 17 Thank you.
So just from what I've seen posted, I'm sort of staggered.
Teaching as a profession can be a huge gray civil liability issue...especially if you're, you know, trying to do it right AND keep your job.
The older the kids, the riskier it gets. The higher supervisory level you take, the more risks you take. But SOMEONE has to do it. Right? That's why public servants are...servants? Right?
I've read Sci-Fi novels centered around 1. no plant life 2. no women 3. no men. I'm waiting for the plotline with 4. no teachers.
@antinous
I'm very, very against authoritarian actions by schools, and believe that they are given far too much latitude in suspending students' rights, but I don't think the man in question went over the line.
From what I understand of the situation, there was no "illegal search and seizure" as some posters have suggested; the man asked, the kid agreed. If he had simply taken the phone and started looking through it there would have been a problem, but if the kid was too stupid to lie, or at least refuse to answer, it's his own damn fault.
Whether he should have even looked into the matter is another issue entirely; I'm unsure if I would agree it was proper for him to do the investigation instead of the police, but the courts have consistently backed school administration in investigating accusations of illegal materials on school property (drugs, weapons, etc.).
As for calling in the police, at that point he still didn't know if a crime had actually been committed; he couldn't identify the person in the picture, so he didn't know if she was underage or not, and the person in the picture was NOT naked - nothing more was showing than you'd find on display at the local pool. At this point the picture was probably being considered by them as "contraband" and not "OMFG CHILD PR0N!". School contraband is a school disciplinary matter, and not a police matter.
Antinous is right.
One key point, from the Post article, is that the assistant principal called in MANY students for interrogation, not just one. He heard a rumour about nakedness, and started hauling in students he felt were "likely" to be involved. What exactly were his criteria for a student to be a "likely" suspect? On what grounds was he rifling students' cell phones? Nothing but rumour and personal bias. No disturbances, no incidents. The AP had no actual evidence at this point and--importantly--he was WRONG about all the other students he brought in to talk with the "school's safety and security official". He found nothing.
This is from a teacher/administrator with 30 years experience?
It smacks of moralizing, prurience, and over-concern.
Also:
Read the comments at the Washington Post's site, and it is seems that the assistant principal was a proponent of draconian, zero-tolerance school policies.
Maybe, maybe not. But if true, his petard blew up real good.
@Anonymous, look, I grew up in Virginia and I know Loudon county. I don't mean "right-wing," I don't mean politically conservative. I mean socially/culturally conservative in the sense of -- it ain't San Francisco or Manhattan.
'My problem with this is that he started it.'
Agreed. This isn't an ordeal, this is poetic justice. This guy is a total scumbag, and shouldn't have anything to do with teens - that his career ended up being ruined for something other than it should be ruined for is a procedural mishap - that it ended up being ruined by the very thing he was trying to get his students in trouble for is what makes it poetic justice.
The charge is "failure to report suspected child abuse." I'd like to know, why that charge? Is it because the student with the picture originally was 17, and the girl 16?
Because that's sure what it sounds like. So if that's the case the assertion of the court would be that the 17 year old committed child abuse by having the picture (putting the 17 year old in lots of potentially life ruining trouble due to the officiousness of this teacher), even if not it seems - from other stories that have been seen that it could very likely have gone this way.
So you know, my natural reaction is screw this guy, mixed with a big heap of schadenfreude and and a little whipped cream of sorrow that he didn't really get in as much trouble as he nearly caused for his student who he was trying to 'protect' (meaning, it looks like to me, destroy)
@19 -
Which is right there why I don't support children going to public school. Who on Earth in their right mind would trust their kids, in whole physically and mentally, to these total strangers with a penchant for fascism and power trips?
On the subject of the actual subject here? I think everyone is in the wrong. The teacher(s)/administrator(s) for various stupidities (transferring a picture to your own phone? what a moron.) the student, not for the picture - that's called puberty - but for the pantsing, the mom - for reacting completely inappropriately to something her son was in the wrong for (the pantsing), the media - do we need a reason for that one? The government - for running a public school system that is total crap and should have been abandoned long ago, let's see who else.... anyone else I haven't offended yet with this comment. :-D
American values when it comes to raising children are rather twisted and it shows in the farcical mishaps like the above incident. The teenage boy who engaged in sexual harassment received no form of reprehension whatsoever, the concerned administrator who attempted to intervene got caught up in the witch hunt against child pornography and was prosecuted despite the fact that the prosecution had no evidence against him whatsoever, the mother who dotes on her son decides to let our overzealous legal system take responsibility over the welfare of her child instead of confronting the issue herself, and a great deal of money, time, and a person's professional career is wasted over absolutely nothing.
This almost sounds like the subject for a black comedy of errors, but in the state of this country, seeing as how there are only two boogeymen left in the world; terrorists and pedophiles; such a comedy would never dare be written nor would it take well to a potential audience since any discussion of this subject, even in jest, must be treated with the utmost gravity lest we show tacit support for unquestionable evil.
In my experience, the only drawback to working with kids, although it is a doozy, is... parents.
Many of you should consider reading the article, and revising your comments, as well as giving consideration to adopting the general policy of actually reading an article before commenting on an article.
Isn't this what the teachers' union should be for? To defend teachers against accusations, etc? Where was the union?
The crime this teacher committed was that he was overly personally involved in the investigation. Why did the Principal ask the teacher to retain the initial photo? Maybe because topless photos of teenatge girls are Kryptonite and will destroy the career of anyone in education found with them on their district-provided computer?
What should have happened is that when the teacher went to the Principal the principal should have involved the campus security officer and the teacher should have been out of the equation from there on out. The district wants to hold on to the picture, the principal, security officer, or the police can figure out a way to hold it.
I find it very hard to believe the student had "no idea" who sent him the picture - every text has a "from" address, doesn't it?
A large part of this teacher's defense is that he was holding the child porn on his computer for a friend...
The negative comments here are simply amazing - you'd bitch if it was a report about teachers calling the police for some minor refraction and shake your head.
This is why - and why this man was right for treating it sensibly as a school matter. And why the witch hunt was wrong...getting it sent to his own phone was stupid...but teachers or principals aren't lawyers or IT geeks. They're academics (well principals are managers, nothing more, but still, not their main skillset).
And 17 year olds having images of 16 year olds not showing anything more than a beach photo is not child porn!
Like many children, I suspect, I came into contact with porn at school. It was in the form of magazines, there being no intertubes at the time, and almost soft porn by today's standards. But I had no doubt that I was doing something illicit, and would have been punished for that contact had I been caught. At the time, I don't think I would have thought of protesting that the teacher or administrator that caught me would have had no right to investigate or confiscate. I was at school, the teacher was in authority over me in loco parentis, what could I do? Even now, as an adult, it seems odd to me to claim that Oei had no right to investigate such a thing, or that he acted unwisely when he decided to do nothing administrative about this fairly clean-sounding picture.
To me, Oei appears to have used his judgement and his authority responsibly, and been hung out to dry by his superior and dragged through the pedophobic legal system for no real reason and little legal effect.
It's insane, to me, the lengths that bad parents will go to in order to bail out their unruly monsters. Seriously. If the mother was any kind of parent, she'd have dealt with her kid and handled the real problem, rather than trying to screw up someone else's life just to keep from having to deal with the kid she failed to instill any values in.
I am a public school teacher, given to "facism" and "power trips" as the commenter above has noted.
If the article above is accurate:
The student's mother was grasping at something to keep the student from being suspended. I've seen this a hundred times. Kid does something not smart--heck, they're kids! -- momma bear comes roaring to the rescue.
I hope this little story doesn't discourage anyone from becoming a public school teacher. It's a wonderful job, and most of the parents could care less about what happens to their children.
Coincidences / interesting points...
Prosecutor Nicole Wittmann was the woman who brought justice in the case against Rev. James Bevel, a tragic figure who was both a top lieutenant to Martin Luther King Jr. and a man who raped at least two of his young daughters repeatedly over a period of many years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/10/civil-rights-leader-convi_n_96133.html
Wittmann had recently wrapped up the Bevel case when she got involved in this one.
Ting-Yi Oei sued his school district for discrimination after being passed over for a promotion, reportedly because as a Chinese American, he didn't look enough like an authority figure to be principal.
http://www.asianfortunenews.com/site/article_0308.php?article_id=33
Stories about parents pulling this type of cry baby my kid's infallible shit makes me chuckle because I remember similar instances (less a cellphone of course) so vividly from my own high school years. If I got caught for pantsing a girl my mom would have looked me in the eyes and asked me the truth. Then I would have had to apologize in front of the principal, the teacher, the girl and her mother, as well as my mom. In fact maybe that's why I never pantsed a girl, because I know what my mom would have done if I got caught!
Teachers can be meddlesome, but more often than not, its at the least an attempt to inject some common sense into a worthy cause. When teachers aren't allowed to be human anymore then education fails.
There's enough blame for all parties to share in it, certainly. But to blame the teacher, administrator, or even the parent more than the student (which everyone seems to be doing) is wrong. This was the student's mess. Everyone who tried to clean it up got tarred worse than the student did.
And that's the real issue, IMO. The student screwed up. Even if we believe his story about "not knowing" who sent him the photo, flagging a girl is not the work of a well-adjusted, innocent bystander student. That's malicious, willful harassment. And it establishes a pattern of female degradation when paired with the photo.
Yet the student came out of this with a minor suspension (at worst). Can we blame a parent for wanting to protect their child? School personnel for wanting to protect the rest of their student body? I don't think so. But we can certainly blame and punish the cruel kid who started this whole mess, yet no one seems interested in that. Baffling.
As a final comment, I would think the teacher in question could sue the parent for defamation of character.
that's my brother's school! the principal is back to work and everything is kinda cool now.
Regarding the hubbub over whether or not to involve the police: I'm not familiar with Freedom High School in particular, but in general if he refers to conducting his investigation with the school security officer, he's likely referring to a police officer. A local police officer is usually tasked to the school to fill this role.
It also appears that the first unreasonable/nonsensical reaction came from the child's mother. How would you react, if in the course of finding out your son has been suspended for pantsing a girl also find out that he had previously been found to be in possession of what could be, at least, considered inappropriate material for school?
I might wonder why I wasn't informed of the initial event, so that I might have been given the opportunity to discipline my child in a way I felt appropriate. Or I might not care about the photo because it isn't pornographic and he's a growing boy after all.
But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't charge that the school official failed to appropriately report pornographic material to the authorities. Logically, this requires that my child should be charged for possession of child pornography, convicted and labeled a sex offender. All because I didn't want to have to deal with my child at home on suspension for exposing a girl to her classmates.
I think the only person who's punishment continues to appropriately fit their offense is the child of complaining mother. Anonymity and a brief suspension.
"Instead when the boy got in trouble again, this time for pantsing a girl, (which also falls in the area of teenage stupidity)"
Actually it's a serious form of harrassment and can be considered assault.
@44 - In my experience, the vast majority of "teenage stupidity" falls into harassment or assault (or other things that would be considered criminal behavior in adults). I don't think we need to fill our prisons up with 13-17 year olds, though.
Part of the problem with public schools can be seen in some of the posts here. Let the schools take care of these problems. Instead, we have to invoke civil rights at every turn. My 3-yr-old doesn't get due process when he doesn't eat his dinner.
A lawsuit wouldn't have even been in the question 30 years ago - now, it seems nearly every action taken by the schools is done to limit exposure to liability.
Yeah, pantsing sounds not-at-all innocent at this kid's age, and warranted serious treatment by the school. Seventeen is too old to pass this off as horsing around.
While I think prosecuting him in this way was wrong, it was foolish of him to store this data on his computer. This is 2009, and he works in a school. How was he not aware of the illegality of possessing child pornography?
And I do blame the parents, Anon #43. Responsible parents shouldn't respond to the knowledge that their kid harassed classmates by hysterically suing the school. They should respond by parenting their kid. Schools have lost the ability to punish kids in so many cases because parents refuse to accept that their kids might need something other than coddling.
I'm with Nelson. C. on this...I seriously hope that at that age "pantsing," "flagging," or "scanting" isn't considered to be no more than mere horseplay!?
Hooray for oafish jock culture!
Rather than feel anger and outrage at this article, I just feel a sort of sad shame for a society out of control. The most poignant sentence in the article is this: "And so my legal ordeal is done, but I still ask myself: Did anyone benefit from all this?"
The sad shameful moment came from the fact that I could answer this question: The mother of the sexting student benefited by validating the teacher's ordeal in her own mind. The sheriffs benefited by not having to do real work. The school officials benefited by taking all precautions against being sued. The judge benefited by not having to waste time being rational against people's emotions. And the prosecutor benefited by, well, making money.
So yeah, it's a crock. But it's also the sad price we pay for living in our society.
wikkidknttr: Try "The Marching Morons"-lack of teachers is implicit in the story.
Part of the problem with public schools can be seen in some of the posts here. Let the schools take care of these problems. Instead, we have to invoke civil rights at every turn. My 3-yr-old doesn't get due process when he doesn't eat his dinner.
Not exactly disagreeing, but he have to have due process for this issue, as these days an accusation of sexual impropriety is a life sentence.
Let me take this opportunity to slur the 17 year old kid.
#34 Timothy Hutton, I find it very hard to believe the student had "no idea" who sent him the picture - every text has a "from" address, doesn't it?.
Perhaps, the reason they failed to find out who sent him the photo was because nobody did. He snapped it himself.
Is no one concerned that "failure to reported suspected child abuse" is a criminal offense? We make so much noise about those silly English posters telling people to report their neighbours behaving suspiciously, but isn't it much worse on the other side of the Atlantic? Not only are you encouraged to report, if you do not do so, you get thrown in jail. The thing that gets me is *he* didn't think there was any child abuse going on, much less suspect anyone of it. And somebody comes along and say, "I think your opinion is wrong. I think there is reason to suspect child abuse. Off you go to jail."