Tulare Teacher Arrested on Child Porn Charges

Thursday, November 06, 2008

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Jessica Peres
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Tulare, CA, USA (KFSN) -- Police arrested a south Valley Music teacher on child pornography charges.

54-year old Raymond Ferenci has been the band director at Tulare Western High School for the past 19 years. He's been on paid administrative leave since May.

Police said Raymond Ferenci admitted that he sent searched for and possessed child pornography. But investigators said they were especially disturbed that Ferenci had images of teens that were the same age as his students.

As Tulare Western students left school for the day, they were shocked to find out their band teacher was arrested on child pornography charges.

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"How can like you do that, because you get really close to teachers you know," said student Jacke Moreno.

"That would make me uncomfortable at school," said Student Destiney Villa.

Raymond Ferenci taught at Tulare Western for 19 years as the school's band director. He was placed on paid administrative leave last May after reports he sent and received inappropriate text messages to three of his female students.

On Thursday, police removed two computers from Ferenci's Visalia home. As Tulare police investigated the allegations, they said they found more than what they were looking for. "He admitted to viewing photos of children as young as four years old, the photos that we actually located were of pre-pubescent children," said Captain Jerry Breckinridge with the Tulare Police Department.

Legal documents reveal Forenci told police he initially was "shocked" by the child pornography image he searched for, but then became "curious" by the photos. Police said he denied ever sexually abusing any students.

"What concerned us was how he drew a correlation between the ages that he was looking for and the ages of his students and he even acknowledged that school officials told some of Ferenci's students about the arrest this afternoon," said Breckinridge.

"She just let them know that this had been taken place the arrest had been made and we're proud of them they've held together it's been quite a long time as far as investigations go," said Principal Vern Barlogio.

Police said some of the photos they found were identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as images from nationally convicted child pornography cases.

Ferenci will be arraigned in federal court Friday afternoon.

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