This morning's offerings from the local newspaper's reporting of this case. A few notes from me:
1) It is my emphasis on the letter to the editor below. You are hearing this theme more and more from folks outside the system, as they comment. It seems that if you have a computer back ground and some distance, the first thing t hat strikes you is - How did that porn pop-up storm happen on a school computer? What safety and security was (or was not) in place? Who was in charge of that? Do they not share the blame?
2) Main article shows local lawyer now has help from William Dow, a high priced CT lawyer who often takes on high profile cases.
3) The husband has a web site asking fro money for their defense fund.
4) It looks like in the modern era, every newspaper has to have a comment section and/or blog companion to the newsprint copy. In this case the comment section refers to the blog of the education beat reporter who seems to be (to my reading) more willing to express his opinions in the blog, rather than reporting on the who, what. when, where, how of a standard news story. In this case he got creamed by another columnist in the Hartford based Courant, and actually pulled his blog comments. The public commentary caught on and reposted the pulled comments back into the comment section.
It is interesting that this is the person who you would find routinely covering or coordinating the local coverage of the mundane school board meetings, the march of budgets, changes in school administration, local reactions to new state and fed mandates, and the bad news incidents like a kid getting arrested in school, etc. In these cases you hope the reporter is just there to get the story and get the details correct enough so that part survives the editor. What you see in the blog is the person with a definite point of view and strong opinions. It is hard not to think that this point of view would not color the reporting. In this case the act of blogging revealed to me more about the storymaker than I would have known in the past. Does it help? I do not know, I am going to think about it. For now it strikes me that it used to be OK to eat the sausage without thinking too much about how it was made.
5) And my good buddy Pam - now the current Superintendent of the town where this happened (she was not when this happened several years ago), how cool would it be if she was still teaching Grade 3 down the hall and we were still doing cool things w/ kids and technology. Such a talented woman. Every time a headline hits I hope that the good of moving quickly up the administrative ladder outweighs the crap the comes with it. She does look sharp in those designer suits when she gets on camera though.
Letter to the editor: Porn charges ruin Norwich's image
The substitute teacher's conviction in court, in which the judge preferred a police officer's inaccurate, just plain wrong testimony to that of a computer security expert, has made Norwich a laughingstock.How can you folks be so ignorant?
The school administration should be brought up on charges for allowing such a time bomb to exist in the first place. Criminal negligence seems to fit the bill. Yet, the poor sub gets the sack and faces jail time. For shame, Norwich, for shame.
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REX MILLER
Alexandria, Va.
Norwich porn case may be delayed
By GREG SMITH
Norwich Bulletin
NORWICH -- Sentencing could be postponed for the former substitute teacher convicted of exposing her seventh-grade students to pornographic images on a middle school classroom computer.
At the same time, the husband of convicted teacher Julie Amero has written several entries in an Internet site that is accepting contributions for her legal defense.
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Attorney John Cocheo, who defended Amero last month during her trial in Norwich Superior Court, said Wednesday he has enlisted aid from New Haven attorney William Dow before the March 2 sentencing and the appeal process. Amero faces up to 40 years in prison.
"He's one of the top lawyers in the state," Cocheo said of Dow.
A formal request for a postponement will be submitted to Judge Hillary Strackbein, he said, to allow Dow time to become familiar with the case. He expects a response by next week.
Cocheo said he thinks Dow has agreed to enter the fray of the highly publicized case because "he sees it as an injustice that this happened. I think it's a moral issue for him."
Dow did not return calls Wednesday for comment. Cocheo said Dow has offered to perform work for free.
Amero's husband, Wes Volle, is using an Internet site to appeal for money to pay her legal fees.
"Julie and I can't afford to fight this battle on our own. Our expenses have been in excess of $20,000 to date," Volle writes.
Oct. 19, 2004, Amero was substitute teaching a language arts class at Kelly Middle School, when the incident occurred. The initial investigation by the school revealed pornographic sites were viewed almost continuously from 9:24 am. to 11:11 a.m. that morning.
During her trial, Amero never denied the pictures had appeared on her computer, but said she had tried to shield the students from viewing the images, which were out of her control.
"The pop-ups never went away. It was one after another," Amero said during her testimony. "Every time I clicked the box in the corner, the red box, the red x, more were generated."
Kelly School Principal Scott Fain interviewed 60 students after the incident. Ten said they had seen nude images on Amero's computer.
Amero's conviction has attracted worldwide interest from computer experts and amateurs alike. Most are upset about her plight and many lament the perceived lack of evidence. Others described having had experiences similar to what Amero claims happened.
"The truth is that they should be going after the ones who created these ads and the software to invade computers," Carol Love of Raleigh, N.C., wrote by e-mail. "They are the ones who should be in jail, not this woman."
Amero, 40, of Windham, who also has not returned repeated calls from the Bulletin, was convicted by a jury of four counts of risk of injury to a minor, based on the evidence she exposed her students to nude images on her classroom computer.
"It's up to the judge, but I really think a sentence of incarceration would be inappropriate," Cocheo said.
State prosecutor David Smith said Wednesday he plans to be prepared for sentencing March 2 until he hears otherwise.
"The judge makes the ultimate ruling," Smith said of the sentence.
Reach Greg Smith at 425-4219 or gasmith@norwichbulletin.com
All Things Education
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Enough. Enough e-mails, phone calls and letters to the editor defending Julie Amero. I’m sick of them. The worst part of all is that people jump to these conclusions without viewing any of the evidence or police documents. Here are the facts: Amero showed graphic pornography to up to 10 children in a Kelly Middle School class, according to a police investigation.
There was no magic, mysterious conspiracy to arrest and convict this woman. No group of students said, “We hate this teacher and now we’re going to ruin her life.” There were no bungling school district administrators or evil police. Computer filters can’t stop every one of the millions of pornography Web sites from slipping through. Blaming the school, the police or anyone else for what Amero did is like blaming a rape victim for being raped. It’s sick, it’s wrong, it’s ignorant and it’s moronic. The school didn’t even bring charges up against Amero. The police did.
According to a Norwich police affidavit, “the pornographic sites were almost continuously viewed from approximately 9:24 a.m. to approximately 11:11 a.m.” No one accidentally clicks on pornographic pop-ups advertisements for nearly two hours continuously. According to the affidavit, at least one of the Web sites required the person viewing the images to click on a box agreeing to terms of disclosure beforehand.
Here’s the kicker: AMERO WAS NOT CONVICTED OF LOOKING AT PORNOGRAPHY ON A SCHOOL COMPUTER. She was convicted of four counts of “Risk of Injury to a Minor.” That means she was convicted of NOT DOING ENOUGH TO PREVENT CHILDREN FROM SEEING PORNOGRAPHY ON THE COMPUTER. Now, does she deserve 40 years in jail, of course not. She was offered probationary time, which would lead to her not having a criminal record, and she turned it down, according to her attorney. Now, she’s been convicted and she’ll face her sentence in March. I’m sure the judge will use prudence.
So even if you give Amero the benefit of the doubt, and you say the pornography was on the computer to begin with (and she simply found it there), then she should have covered the computer, unplugged it or forced the students to stand in the back of the room far away from the computer. Don’t let multiple children, all were younger than 16, see people performing sexual acts upon each other on a school computer screen. That’s just wrong.
posted by Daniel Axelrod at 3:36 PM 8 comments
