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Date: 01-22-2024
Case Style:
Case Number: 2:23-CR-0097
Judge: Michael H. Waton
Court: The United States Court for the Southern District of Ohio (Franklin County)
Plaintiff's Attorney: The United States Attorney’s Office in Columbus
Defendant's Attorney:
Description:
A former local high school teacher was sentenced to 240 months in prison for crimes related to secretly recording explicit videos of his students at school and possessing child sexual abuse material.
Justin Foley, 48, of Delaware, Ohio, pleaded guilty in May 2023 to sexually exploiting a minor and possessing child pornography.
Foley was employed as a chemistry teacher at Columbus Alternative High School at the time of his offenses. He used his cell phone and other digital media devices in a hidden manner to capture the genitalia of his female students under their skirts and shorts during the school day.
According to court documents, in August 2022, the Delaware Police Department received CyberTip reports from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) regarding numerous images of apparent child sexual abuse material that were uploaded via Google email accounts. Investigators tracked the IP addresses for the reported email accounts to Foley. During the investigation into Foley, officers discovered a second CyberTip report. Five of the IP addresses in the second report belonged to Columbus Public Schools.
Delaware County law enforcement officials executed a search warrant at Foley’s residence on Sept. 20, 2022. Court documents detail that Foley admitted to creating videos in the classroom and hallways of the school at which he taught and that he had created some of these videos as recently as the previous week.
A review of Foley’s devices by the FBI revealed they contained numerous videos that were voyeuristic in nature and appear to have been self-produced. The videos were recorded at the high school Foley worked at, local department stores in central Ohio, public areas of downtown Delaware, Ohio, and various dressing rooms at different unidentified locations. It is apparent from the videos that the victims depicted in them did not know they were being recorded.
Foley created numerous videos of female students in the hallways of Columbus Alternative High School or of females that were students in his classroom. In the videos he secretly recorded, Foley would hide his phone camera or place it beside or behind the victims in attempt to record up their skirts or shorts. Foley then took screenshots from the content he filmed of his victims and created still images of the victim’s nude genitalia, zooming in and “lightening” some of the screenshots to enhance the images.
In addition to the videos he created himself, more than 1,000 images of child sexual abuse material were recovered from Foley’s devices that depicted a series of images of prepubescent females in various stages of nudity or fully nude exposing their genitals or anus to the camera.
Foley was arrested and charged locally in Delaware County in September 2022. He was charged federally in November 2022.
Kenneth L. Parker, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; J. William Rivers, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cincinnati Division; Westerville Police Chief Charles Chandler; Delaware Police Chief Adam Moore; Delaware County Prosecutor Melissa A. Schiffel; and other members of the FBI’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force announced the sentence imposed today by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson. Assistant United States Attorneys Jennifer M. Rausch and Emily Czerniejewski are representing the United States in this case.
Outcome:
Plaintiff's Experts:
Defendant's Experts:
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