Middle School Teacher Arrested for Child Porn

PINELLAS MIDDLE SCHOOL TEACHER ARRESTED FOR POSSESSION OF CHILD PORNOGRAPHY

TALLAHASSEE, FL - Attorney General Bill McCollum announced today that his CyberCrime Task Force in the Tampa Bay region has made its first arrest, taking a middle school teacher into custody on charges of child pornography possession. Law enforcement officers with the Attorney General's CyberCrime Unit, the Clearwater Police Department and the U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement today arrested Aaron J. Stewart, a teacher at Clearwater Intermediate Middle School.

Investigators discovered Stewart's possession of child pornography during an undercover internet investigation that identified known images of child pornography and traced the files back to Stewart's computer. A search warrant was executed at Stewart's Clearwater home and his computer was seized, along with additional computer equipment. Stewart, 28, admitted to knowingly possessing the images identified during the undercover investigation, many of which appeared to be of children as young as seven or eight years of age.

The computer and other equipment seized will undergo additional forensic analysis to determine whether any additional images of child pornography are present. Stewart was booked into the Pinellas County Jail. He will be charged with one count of promoting the sexual performance of a child, a second-degree felony, and eight counts of possession of child pornography, a third-degree felony. He faces up to 55 years in prison if convicted of all charges.

The Tampa Bay CyberCrime Task Force was formally launched in early July, featuring a strong team of state, local, and federal partners joining together to battle the exploitation of children online. Today's arrest is the first made by the task force, which operates out of the Attorney General's CyberCrime office in Tampa. Additional agencies involved in the task force include Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Postal Inspectors, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida, the Polk County Sheriff's Office, the Manatee County Sheriff's Office, the Tampa Police Department, the St. Petersburg Police Department, the Clearwater Police Department, the Bradenton Police Department, the New Port Richey Police Department, the Plant City Police Department, the Pinellas Park Police Department and the Hillsborough County School Board Police.