A Broward County elementary school physical education teacher was arrested Tuesday on seven counts of possession of child pornography, police said.
Craig Rogers, 60, a teacher at Westchester Elementary School in Coral Springs, is accused of operating a social media account that was sharing child pornography with other users through Kik, a messaging social media platform, Coral Springs Police said in a news release Wednesday.
A Coral Springs Police detective with the Internet Crimes Against Children unit received an online tip in late May from the National Center of Missing and Endangered Children, which led to the investigation, the police department said.
Videos on the Kik account showed victims as young as 6 participating in sexual acts with adults, according to a redacted probable cause affidavit the police department released. At least 75 files showed “nude children but fall short of the statutory definition of child pornography,” the affidavit said.
“It was determined that numerous photographs located in Roger’s Kik account showed his office and equipment room in the school,” the police department said in the news release.
Rogers shared photos with other Kik users of “clothed students engaged in physical education,” the affidavit said. In Kik messages, Rogers called himself a “pervert teacher” and wrote, “My favorite students are age 12 at my school.”
Other messages indicated Rogers had sent sexually explicit photos of himself to other users on Kik while at his desk at the school, the affidavit said.
Rogers had been renting a room at a motel in Coral Springs, where Coral Springs and Broward Sheriff’s Office personnel from different units executed a search warrant Wednesday. Investigators took several electronics from the motel for forensic analysis, the police department said.
Rogers was booked into the Broward Main Jail, where he remained Wednesday evening. At the time of his arrest, he was on pre-trial release in an unrelated case, the affidavit said.
Rogers was arrested on misdemeanor charges of stalking and giving a false crime report in April, stemming from alleged repeated harassment of a family of three, including a Coral Springs Police officer, who lived next door to him at the time, a probable cause affidavit said. Rogers has pleaded not guilty to those charges.
Keyla Concepción, a spokesperson for Broward County Public Schools, said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that Rogers was reassigned away from the school and students in April, after his previous arrest, which was off campus.
“Our District and school administration are deeply disturbed by the allegations and are cooperating fully with law enforcement in its investigation,” the statement said.
Rogers was hired at Westchester Elementary in 2003 and has been a PE teacher since 2004.
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