Teacher Granted New Trial in Pop-Up Case

[Aaron Smith]

Good news! It seems that after a substitute teacher was officially held accountable for the mistakes/actions of others, a judge has finally said "Wait, there's something wrong with that."

Of course I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea. THis is why in many cases teachers' computers are locked down so that they can't install anything, but this is also why we need to educate all teachers everyone on internet safety and security.

[David Bowman]

As Aaron has indicated, this is an incredibly disturbing criminal case brought against a substitute teacher. The case took 2 years to come to court and the case had been invoked by the State of Connecticut. It finally came to trial in January 2007, bringing a number of charges against Julie Amero which have not been dropped as yet since she is awaiting a second trial.

This case stemmed from an unusual incident that occurred on or about October 19th, 2004, in the City of Norwich, Conn. The defendant was accused of: "... willfully and unlawfully causing a child under the age of sixteen years to be placed in such a situation that the morals of said child were likely to be impaired".

There was flimsy evidence presented in court against the defendant and this substitute teacher has still not been found not guilty. For many of us a transcript is just one source of much illuminating evidence here that needs to be carefully studied by IT experts and teaching staff to avoid such recrimination again.

While many of us in IT are well aware of the myriad risks of any software product installation far more than that can go terribly wrong. Hopefully it is rare that a substitute teacher's entire future career can be ruined so easily. Three years later the defendant is still under a cloud of suspicion. So many complex issues can be found in this case. Some involve a myriad of Russian sites which are often the major culprits with the most potentially harmful malware and popup concerns. How do we protect the children and the teachers in this 21st century?

All teachers are in the line of fire, merely by sitting in front of a computer screen visible to a class. Those of my friends in this teaching profession should carefully read the transcript attached and comment over this coming July 4th Independence Day week.

Makes me very upset at what can happen in a benign classroom setting with a class of tweenagers potentially acting as one's accusers. For those with an ear close to the IT security ground be extra vigilant in keeping up to date daily with all the adware, spyware and trojan horses going the rounds.

The implications of such cases brought against professional teachers by local governments should bring us all to our feet in outrage.

To that end I have added the full text of the court transcript in PDF format for those able to read for themselves and judge the evidence presented. Ideally we can all act as jury here and save other teachers like Julie from this fate worse than is imaginable.

Regards
David