TEEN PLEADS GUILTY TO COMPUTER CRIME, AWAITS SENTENCING
The Upstate South Carolina teenager who spread around nude images of his teacher last month has pleaded guilty to a second-degree computer crime. He will be evaluated by the S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice (SCDJJ) prior to being sentenced by a Spartanburg County family court judge.
The as-yet-unidentified student, who attended Union High School, stole teacher Leigh Anne Arthur‘s phone in early March while she was patrolling the halls of the government-run campus. Upon finding nude images of Arthur on the device, he proceeded to photograph these images and then disseminated them to others.
He had previously been charged with aggravated voyeurism, although that charge was dropped.
Arthur was fired in the aftermath of the incident … a decision we (and others) still believe was wrong.
Obviously she showed poor judgment in having naked photos stored on an unlocked mobile device – one that she brought onto school property. But the school’s allegation that this somehow constituted Arthur “making the photos available to students” is a stretch.
“It seems to us that a teacher who places a personal item inside their desk has a reasonable expectation of privacy, right? Certainly she’s not consenting or expecting a student to rife through the desk, find her cellphone, scroll through its image gallery, find a naughty picture and then take a picture of the naughty image and blast it far and wide,” we wrote last month. “That’s a violation of privacy, as far as we’re concerned.”
Arthur is suing the district and its interim superintendent – David Eubanks – alleging breach of contract and defamation. Her suit seeks damagers for “injury to reputation, mental suffering, and emotional distress” as well as attorney’s fees and court costs.