Phoenix school teacher accused of showing porn in classPHOENIX, AZ -- Police have opened an investigation into reports that a photography teacher played pornographic videos during class earlier this week.
According to a letter sent home to parents at Arcadia High School, the incident happened Monday.
Teenagers in the classroom said they saw six video clips of what one student described as, "torture porn, of like girls being tied up."
One student who spoke on record with ABC15 did not want her name to be identified.
She said the teacher had connected his personal computer to a projector screen for a photography lesson.
He then assigned half the class to grab cameras and take pictures; the remaining students had an in-class assignment.
That’s when the student said the teacher began viewing the videos.
"He forgot the projector screen was turned on and he started watching porn and we were all just like sitting there shocked that he was watching this in front of the class," the student said. "He was just all into it, I don’t even think he was paying attention to us, he was just all in his computer."
The student said the incident wasn't as much offensive as it was unnerving.
"I was just creeped out that a teacher that I have known from the beginning of the year could have been watching this the whole time we were in class," the student told us. "That’s just gross, he’ll watch it in front of kids in that school when he’s supposed to be teaching.”
Phoenix police officials said the campus’ school resource officer is writing a report, which will be sent to detectives in the Department’s Family Investigations Bureau.
"Just like knowing that he watched that in front of everybody it’s… I wouldn’t want him near me," the student said.
Those detectives will conduct their own investigation and if they think the case merits charges, they said they will pass it up to the County Attorney’s Office.
Meanwhile, the letter Arcadia High School sent home to parents states that "the teacher was placed immediately on administrative leave and the matter was referred to the district office for a full investigation… We have begun our efforts to find a highly qualified teacher replacement, and are determined to move our Photography Program in a positive direction."
― krots tphns (Curt1s Stephens), Friday, 12 September 2008 00:14 (sixteen years ago)