Private School Teacher Busted For Kiddie Porn Collection

A 28-year-old who has taught at Horace Mann and Friends Seminary and is currently a counselor at the 92nd Street Y was arrested yesterday on charges related to child pornography possession. Federal prosecutors say they found 43 CDs with "illicit images and videos of children engaged in sex acts" in John Thomas's Harlem apartment.

Apparently the feds "traced the Internet path of the lurid videos to his doorstep." (Read the charges.) The Daily News reports, "The porn featured children around the same ages of those he taught and counseled." Which means that when a News reporter descended on parents of campers, parents offered quotes like, "It's awful! There's a lot of sick people out there... . It's so scary." However, Thomas' friend said at the courthouse, "This is not him. He has never been in trouble before."

A federal prosecutor asked for electronic monitoring of Thomas, noting, "There are kids everywhere and it's to keep him away from kids. The danger here is not just his employment, there are playgrounds everywhere," while his lawyer argued, "Mr. Thomas has been a teacher for five years and there have been no allegations of acts like this. The charges are severe indeed but they are limited to viewing." In the end, the judge rejected monitoring but said Thomas had to "avoid anywhere where children congregate."

Thomas was supposed to start teaching at the Bank Street School this fall. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on August 13, 2010 8:46 AM

Comments [rss]

potsmoker

trucrypt encyrption and torpark proxy anonymizer woulda fixed that. no evidence and you cant be forced to give up your password, for reals.

anyway as an it helpdesk tech i charge 5G's minimum for not exposing the kiddie collection.

mother

John Thomas (yes, that really is his name) was my child's favorite counselor during the two summers that he attended 92nd St. Y camp, and they maintained contact (online and some phone calls) for a while afterwards. I don't expect to find out anything about this relationship when my child returns home but I'm sure there are plenty of other parents who are having coronaries right now about this.

My spouse and I found Joe to be charming, intelligent and pleasant with the kids, and I'm sure those are the traits that one uses to gain confidence of a victim in a situation of abuse. I can only hope that he did not engage any of the children he taught over the years in creating any of the porn...and I hope that those who were solicited and involved in this abuse will be able to recover from the scars that this will surely cause. If not, there's a lifetime of misery and pain ahead for these children.

NannyState

My guess is that he was saving acting out on his fantasies for his retirement years.

longacre

From what I've read, the investigation was carried out by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) but no one explains why. Any ideas? Is he an illegal? Was he trading with folks overseas?

jaycjay

ICE's Office of Investigations, "Operation Predator":

http://www.ice.gov/pi/childexploitation/index.htm

Boogie Down

I'm guessing it's the latter. He'd probably have a hard time getting that type of job without the proper documentation. However, he could be a foreigner here legally who is facing deportation if convicted on these charges.

srsly

If I were a pedophile, I'd work at TSA. Free nude child pics, if you don't mind the weirdo black and white microscatter look.

jaycjay

If I were a pedophile, I'd work for ICE. No one has a bigger collection of child porn than the feds.

Splicer

"John Thomas"? Really?

r1b2

Precisely

TheTruthYouSeek

I'm sick of all these new laws but, ya know, there should be a law saying that you can't say someone's real name in the media of being accused of certain crimes without them first being convicted or something. Because if this guy is innocent you all fucked up his life.

Kojak

Yeah I agree. The news outlets are more than eager to publish the names of those arrested but not so eager to dedicate the same newstime for those arrested but found not guilty (Unless its a BIG story).

Såkandulæredet

I was about to jump on this as well. All that Gothamist said was the authorities ran on his internet behavior and traced the photos back to his apartment from the internet. If that were the only thing that linked him and for example he had an unsecured wireless, someone else could have been sharing the photos.

BUT... I read the NY Post article and it said the guy had 43 CDs of the kiddie porn physically in his apartment, and the videos also stored on his computer. So yeah that's pretty caught red-handed right there unless someone else somehow put them there. Apparently, the internet detection part was what led them to use the search warrant I guess.

Anyway, in case you need another reason to secure your wireless connection, yep a pedophile could potential get on there and the police would be led to you. But this guy here, he seems like he's guilty since he physically had the kiddie porn.