Eighteen months ago, on September 3, 2014, a young woman in Saugus, MA saw four disturbing videos in her Snapchat app. The videos were sent to her by a high school friend, Timothy Cyckowski, and they depicted two people sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl in a wooded area. The young woman could hear Cyckowski laughing…
As I travel around the United States lecturing to school districts, educators, students, and parents, I am often asked about the definition of the word “cybertrap.” While I can’t claim credit for coining the word, I have developed a body of work using the term, which so far has not been formally defined. I think…
[This article was originally posted to the Beacon Broadside blog and is reposted with permission.] On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.” Those were the closing lines of Apple Computer’s groundbreaking (and screen-shattering) advertisement during the 1984 Super Bowl for its new computer, the Macintosh.…
[Update on 2017-04-03]: Arthur apparently decided to drop her lawsuit against the school district on December 2, 2016. Neither Arthur nor her attorney issued a public statement regarding her decision. [Update on 2016-04-26]: Last week, the student who accessed Arthur’s phone and shared her nude photos with other students pleaded guilty to computer fraud in…
Senior picture days are a well-established right of passage in American high schools. They are a great opportunity for students to demonstrate school spirit, to capture memories to be laughed over at reunions decades hence, and generally to celebrate the impending transition from childhood to quasi-independent adulthood. The photo at the top of this post,…
At first blush (if anyone actually does that anymore), this seemed like a fairly straightforward, technology-facilitated teacher-student boundary violation. But then the legal documents began flying … Sex and a Guilty Plea In May 2014, a 17-year-old student showed a cellphone video to the principal of Richard King High School in Corpus Christi, Texas. The…
A 25-year-old Las Vegas teacher named Jill Lafave is charged with having sex with an 16-year-old male student in classroom at Valley High School, just east of the city’s infamous Strip. Lafave, who is currently on paid administrative leave, was an English and special education teacher at the high school. The two were reportedly seen…
Invisible Target: Breaking the Cycle of Educator Sexual Abuse. Andrea Clemens. 2015. Hickory Nut Publishing. 302 pages. [Source: Review copy from author] In the fall of 1981, Andrea Clemens entered the ninth grade and was upset to find out that one of her instructors was Robert Baker, a science teacher at Norwood Junior High School.…
One of the ongoing challenges in investigating cases of educator misconduct is that so many of them involve text messages, which are a particularly ephemeral form digital evidence. Unlike files on a hard drive, which typically linger long after they are “deleted,” or emails, which are routinely archived in multiple locations (just ask Ollie North!),…
A few years ago, my wife Amy was selected to serve as a Fulbright Scholar, teaching American and art history in Guangzhou, China (you can read about her experiences in her delightful book, Lessons from China.) While we were there, we had a chance to travel to different parts of the country. As a life-long…
