TURNING A BLIND EYE: Teacher not to blame for porn

If you're a teacher and your classroom computer has spyware on it, beware: you could end up serving a 40-year prison term for, essentially, exposing children to pornography.

In October 2004, Julie Amero, a teacher assigned to cover a seventh-grade classroom as a substitute at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Conn., was stunned to see her computer screen filled with a flood of pornographic Web site ads. Students saw the ads, which multiplied as she tried closing them, and though students said Amero tried to block their view, two days later Amero was told she would not teach at the school again.

Welcome to America, where a teacher can still be railroaded, her life ruined and her reputation tarnished irrevocably, all because her school failed to take adequate Internet security precautions.

Amero was later arrested, charged and found guilty of risk of injury to a minor and could see as many as 40 years in prison when she's sentenced on March 29. Prosecutors portrayed her as actively searching for porn in class, while her attorneys argue the school's computers had inadequate virus protection and no firewall. They also say the prosecution's investigators never bothered to check the computer for spyware, adware or viruses, though they were sure careful to write down the address of every porn ad that popped up that day in order to portray Amero as a sex offender.

Amero was found guilty because none of the evidence about the school's lack of security and the prevalence of adware and spyware on the computer was admissible because defense attorneys failed to report everything to prosecutors in a timely manner.

Because of that, a woman whose only crime was relative Internet illiteracy could spend the rest of her life in prison for risk of injury to a minor. What's truly criminal is that her school system is willing to railroad her, glossing over their lack of computer security in the name of protecting the children from a potential molester.

This disgusts me, and it should do the same to you.

We're living in a country where an accusation makes headlines and taints a person's image before a trial even takes place. The media plays up the Internet porn angle, and we end up with a case like Amero's, in which a school district wants to make sure no one thinks kids are being molested at their school. Let's make sure we don't let the teacher who couldn't shut off porn ads in the classroom go without making an example of her.

It doesn't matter what happens when Amero is sentenced. Her life's already over. Even if somehow she wins an appeal down the road, she's permanently a sexual predator. She'll spend life behind bars and the children won't be safer.

Meanwhile, our nation has its trusty sex offender registry, in which those who served their time for a crime are forced to be marked for life so that anyone with a vendetta can plaster a neighborhood with "this guy's a child rapist" flyers, or a city such as Indianapolis can try to regulate where you're allowed to go once out of prison, a form of lifelong house arrest.

All this is in the name of protecting the children, with no one watching to protect the rights of victims who get railroaded by this system.

It's already too late for Julie Amero.

Write to Jonathan at jonathansanders@justice.com

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