Courtesy of the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office
Booking photo of Ting-Yi Oei, who was arrested on child pornography charges in August 2008
By Michael Birnbaum
Originally published at 12:08 p.m., April 1, 2009
Updated at 12:34 p.m., April 1, 2009
A judge yesterday dismissed charges of possession of child pornography that had been filed against a Loudoun County assistant principal.
Ting-Yi Oei, 59, of Reston, an assistant principal at Freedom High School in South Riding, was arrested Aug. 20 after law enforcement officials said that he was in possession of an inappropriate cell phone photo of a female student taken by another student. He was charged with the felony possession count and later was charged with two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor.
But Loudoun Circuit Court Judge Thomas D. Horne threw out all the charges yesterday, saying in a five-page opinion that the photo was not sexually explicit enough to constitute child pornography.
“Child pornography involves a cruel exploitation of youth,” Horne said in the opinion, and he quoted a 1990 case that said that “nudity alone is not enough to make material legally obscene.”
According to court papers filed by the defense, Oei said he obtained the photo as part of a school investigation into rumors that students were circulating nude photographs.
Courtesy of the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office
Booking photo of Ting-Yi Oei, who was arrested on child pornography charges in August 2008
In the opinion, Horne described the photograph as depicting a female from the chest to the mid-thigh. The arms of the female covered her chest, but due to the grainy nature of the photograph, Horne said, it was difficult to determine what parts of her body were visible.
Oei had been reassigned to a clerical job that was not in a school building, Loudoun schools spokesman Wayde Byard said last month. Byard said today that the school system would determine Oei's placement after officials had seen the formal ruling.
Oei obtained the photo March 14, 2008, and law enforcement officials were notified of it by someone else three weeks afterward, said Loudoun sheriff’s spokesman Kraig Troxell. The sheriff’s office charged Oei on May 5 with failure to report suspicion of child abuse or neglect, saying that he had not informed the child’s parents, law enforcement or Child Protective Services of the photo.
That charge, a misdemeanor that carries a fine of up to $500, was later dropped. A grand jury indicted Oei in August on the felony charge of possession of child pornography, punishable by up to five years in prison. Another grand jury later indicted him on the two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
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