Over the past six months, the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force conducted an investigation into the online activities of Jeffrey Thomas Patterson, a seventh-grade science teacher at the West Hills Middle School in West Jordan, Utah (a suburb of Salt Lake City). On Wednesday, November 4, law enforcement officials executed a search warrant…
2015-11-11 Cybertraps for Educators [webinar] from Frederick Lane An online presentation for the Independent Schools Association of the Central States on November 11, 2015. If you are interested in discussing a presentation or professional development program for your organization on this topic, please contact me for information regarding my rates and availability.
On Wednesday, October 28, a freshman at Mulberry High School in Mulberry, FL approached her teacher’s desk to ask a question about classwork that had been assigned. As she neared Vadi Velez-Gonzalez’s desk, she could see his iPhone lying face-up on his desk, and was shocked to see it displaying images of adult gay pornography.…
Over the last several years, I have had the pleasure of working with the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification (NASDTEC). The organization recently issued its call for proposals to present at the 2016 Annual Conference next June in Philadelphia, and I am pleased to announce that I have been selected…
2015-10-30 Minimizing the Risk of Cybertraps for Educators from Frederick Lane A presentation delivered to the Massachusetts Association of School Personnel Administrators on October 30, 2015 in Shrewsbury, Mass. Earlier in the MASPA meeting, four attorneys from the Office of Professional Practices Investigations in the Legal Office of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary…
In an all-too-rare victory for common sense over prurience, a Utah middle school teacher was recently informed that she will not be fired for her slightly risqué Instagram photo gallery. Mindi Jensen, who teaches at the North Sanpete Middle School in Moroni, Utah, used the pseudonym “minscakes” to post photos of herself working out, posing…
In the summer of 2014, an undercover police detective in New Zealand began trading images of child pornography with a man in Anchorage, Alaska. The detective forwarded information about the exchange to Alaska law enforcement officials, who used the data to obtain a search warrant for the home of Daniel Alan Brown, a teaching assistant…
A 45-year-old science teacher at Santa Ana High School was arrested in early September “on suspicion of having sex with a 16-year-old female student” two years earlier. According to the Santa Ana Police Department, Alvar Albert Gonzalez, met the victim in one of his classes and allegedly had sex with her during her school lunch…
In August 2010, a woman named Jennifer Woolsey reportedly found a video on the desktop of her family’s shared computer that showed her husband Brian on the receiving end of a sexual act by a young woman. At the time, both she and her husband were teachers at Sunrise Mountain High School in Peoria, Arizona,…
2015-09-24 Cybertraps for Educators: The Rising Cost of Digital Misconduct from Frederick Lane A presentation delivered on September 24, 2015 in Cape May, NJ, to school business officials from around the state. If you are interested in discussing a presentation or professional development program for your organization on this topic (with or without cowboy hats…
