You can't get facts from the Washington Post. You get - scenarios.
August 21, 2008 - Ting-Yi Oei, 59, assistant principal at Freedom High School, was arrested on child pornography possession charges.
Making controversy out of nothing, his lawyer claimed they were not informed after the grand jury handed down the indictment against Oei on Aug. 11. "The timing raises questions. Why the public spectacle?" However, prosecutor Nicole Wittman said that Oei's attorneys had been informed of the indictment and told to be in court Aug. 12 but that they didn't show up.
"We just feel very strongly that this is not someone who should be in the Loudoun County school system," Wittman said.
What prompted his arrest was a March 14 incident, officials said where Oei allegedly had come to possess an "inappropriate" cellphone photo of a female student taken by another student, said Kraig Troxell, a sheriff's office spokesman.That charge was dropped to be replaced with felony possession of child pornography.
Law enforcement officials were notified of the photo by a third party three weeks later, Troxell said. Oei allegedly did not inform the child's parents, law enforcement or child protective services of the photo, Troxell said, so officials charged him with failure to report suspicion of child abuse or neglect, a violation of state law. Oei was placed on administrative leave with pay.
"There's more to the story," Wittman said without elaborating. "If this was a matter of a photo that he possessed and maintained solely for the purpose of executing his job as vice principal, we would not be interested in prosecuting him. That is not the case."
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TT - It's a time-honored method of journalists to pressure police to give them more information than is healthy for the case by threatening to "run with what we know." Whether that's true in this case or not, surely even the National Enquirer would drop a dime to the prosecutor's office and ask to look at, or be faxed, copies of notification papers that were sent to the attorneys.
