Child Rape on Campus
Back to School
Autumn is often a pleasant whirlwind of new students, faculty and back-to-school research projects. This fall; however, many professors will not be returning to campus due to child pornography arrests. Child sex trafficking and pedophilia have reached epidemic levels, FBI’s Assistant Director of Criminal Investigation Joseph Campbell announced this summer in an interview with the BBC.
In July former Subway sandwich spokesman Jared Fogle’s child porn investigation captured headlines. More than 85% of all child porn convicts are, according to the US Sentencing Commission, white men. Over the summer higher education also racked up more than a few child porn arrests.
Two Professor per Week?
After a University of North Dakota professor was arrested The Dakota Student asked “We can’t help but wonder if this type of thing is common in other schools around the nation?”
The answer is yes. A concerning number professors and staff have been arrested for trading in brutal child sex abuse, including of infants. From University of Virginia’s Assistant Dean, Michael Morris downloading infant anal rape to Kirk Nesset, creative writing professor at Allegheny College with over 500,000 videos/images including folders called “kidsfuck,” too many professors and staff are involved in child sex trafficking.
Both the volume and type of crime should raise alarm bells. Yet academic institutions have remained silent. Damage control is the strategy. Protect the institution — the rallying cry. Since August at least two professors per week have been arrested, arraigned or sentenced.
• On September 17th, American University psychology professor, Elliot McGinnies, was in the news regarding his upcoming court date, 9 October, for sex crimes against children. McGinnies was arrested in 1986 for sexual assault of a nine year old girl. He never spent a day in jail.
• On September 16th Christopher DeZutter, a chemistry professor at the University of Minnesota, was sentenced on four felony child porn counts.
DeZutter was trading in child sex abuse, including infant rape, since 1996 and told investigators “You are not going find a lot of this at home. I do most of this at the office.” His university laptop was “full” of child porn. The University of Minnesota terminated DeZutter after his arrest.
• On September 14th Noel Campbell, an economics professor at University of Central Arkansas, had a court hearing for 301 felony child porn counts. He was using child porn on campus and was arrested, on campus, in April. Campbell was placed on paid leave and banned from campus. Two weeks later he resigned.
• On September 10th Gary Spring, Merrimack College engineering professor, plead guilty to using his college computer to trade in child pornography. Within days of his 2014 arrest Merrimack terminated Spring’s employment.
• On September 3rd J. Martin Favor, an English professor and former chair of the African-American Studies Department at Dartmouth College, was arrested on five felony child pornography charges. Favor was placed on paid leave and prohibited from campus.
• On August 31st Simmons College psychology professor Alyssa Azotea was arrested on four felony counts of child pornography and three misdemeanor counts of endangering the welfare of a child. She, and her boyfriend, had been discussing molesting a five year old child. Simmons College placed Azotea on paid leave.
• On August 31st Adam Zydney, Penn State Graduate Assistant in the Math Department, who was also an instructor at the John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, was arrested on child porn charges. Zydney had over 500 files of child sex abuse and told investigators he had been trading in child sex abuse since he was a teenager.
• On August 20th James Quinn, criminology professor at University of North Texas (UNT), was arraigned on nine felony child porn counts. Quinn resigned from UNT on June 4th after his May arrest.
• August 18th Andrew McKay, Director of Graduate Studies at Thompson Rivers University in Vancouver, Canada plead guilty to possession of child pornography.
• On August 12th Emory University epidemiology professor Kevin Sullivan was arraigned on child porn charges. He was trading in child rape, including children as young as four years old, from university networks. Emory University’s Information Technology Department assisted law enforcement in the investigation.
• On August 10th James Cavalcoli, a bioinformatics professor at the University of Michigan (UM), was arrested when attempting to meet an undercover police officer pretending to be a father offering his son for sex abuse. Cavalcoli is the third UMich employee to be arrested on child sex abuse charges. Stephen Jenson, a pediatric oncologist, was sentenced to three years in prison and Steven Germinder, a finance employee, was also arrested. Both used university computers to trade in child sex abuse, including bestiality.
• On 6th August Robert Beattie, University of North Dakota’s Chair of the Family and Community Medicine Department, was arrested for possession of hundreds of child rape files, including of one year old, on his office computer. He is charged with both state and federal crimes. UND placed Beattie on paid leave.
• On August 3rd Brad Robbert, an adjunct professor at Tulane University, was in court on 51 child porn counts which included children as young as five years old. He had been director of the Tulane University Shakespeare Festival from 2001 to 2009.
Protect the Institution not the Children
Academic institutions with an arrest of a professor or staff typically attempt to minimize media exposure. Employees participating in the crime of child trafficking, which is how child pornography is produced, does not exactly encourage student enrollment. The institutional response of “protect the institution” is collective denial that enables protection of criminals, and not children, much like the ill-advised strategy the Catholic Church adopted.
To my knowledge, no academic institution has invited law enforcement to search their networks for a full investigation of anyone who may be trading in child rape. Not one institution, to my knowledge, has installed child pornography blocking software to prevent this crime from occurring on campus. Higher education, in other words, has taken no preventative measures against child sex trafficking occurring among their ranks.
Given the numbers of child pornography arrests on campus, how many institutions may be ignoring or hiding ongoing crimes against children by current employees? I suspect many.
Time to Talk
Is there a crisis of higher education employees engaged in the criminal activity of child rape and torture? The data say yes.
No child pornography should ever be traded on university and college campuses. It is time leaders in higher education discussed a collective response.
We must demand an end to child pornography on campus. Who will join me?
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Dr. Lori Handrahan can be reached at www.LoriHandrahan.com
