Alabama Teacher Fired for Allegedly Showing Students Obscene Images
by Jim Brown
May 24, 2006
(AgapePress) - - An Alabama school board has fired a science teacher who allegedly showed some of his eighth-grade students Internet videos depicting sex acts and other obscene images.Last week the West Limestone Board of Education voted 6-1 to terminate the contract of tenured teacher Steve White, who has been on unpaid leave since early April. Administrators concluded that White had shown obscene Internet clips, including an animated depiction of former President Bill Clinton engaging in sexual activity.
But Jimmy Corder, one of White's attorneys, insists the teacher did not show students any video film strip. "I was present for the hearing; I heard all of the evidence," the lawyer says. "There were several things reproduced, I think you would say, from his computer." However, Corder asserts, not a single one of these reproduced items, "so far as anybody could show," originated from the teacher's hard drive.
"Everything that anybody alleged was wrong were things that were sent to his computer," the attorney says. "All but one of them were, supposedly -- and I'm not a computer expert -- but all but one of them were somehow either put on his computer through an iPod, which he doesn't own and nobody in his family has, ... or a Flash [digital memory] card."
As far as the Flash card is concerned, Corder says he and his client "don't even know what that is," and only know about the possibility of that technology being involved in putting the images in question on White's computer "because the County had a computer expert go back and pull things off of the hard drive." The attorney claims the inappropriate images were imported into the teacher's computer without his knowledge.
White was reprimanded last month after parents complained that he had shown students an anti-George Bush Internet video in class. However, because of a new state tenure law, he is able to appeal his firing. The case will now proceed to binding arbitration.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
