Kings Park High School student suspended in 'sexting' case escorted out by police

November 10, 2015 By JOIE TYRRELL AND JOHN HILDEBRAND   joie.tyrrell@newsday.com,john.hildebrand@newsday.com

Suffolk County police escort AJ Fenton out of Kings Park High School on Tuesday morning, Nov. 10, 2015, where he was among over a dozen of students were suspended for receiving a text messages showing two students having sex. (Credit: James Carbone)

One of the Kings Park High School students suspended in a "sexting" case went to class Tuesday morning and later was escorted out by Suffolk County police.

AJ Fenton said he was pulled out of his second class of the day and taken to the main office -- and then two police officers led him out of school shortly after 9 a.m.

"I don't think I should have gotten suspended," he told reporters after being removed from the school. "You can't stop someone from sending a text to me."

His father, Andrew Fenton, agreed to have his son leave school after speaking privately with Suffolk police. He said he did not want his son to face criminal trespassing charges but that the "fight was not over."

Suffolk police cars were stationed outside the school Tuesday morning, a day after news that two 14-year-old Smithtown boys had been arrested on felony charges of sending images of a sexual encounter with an underage girl.

The encounter became a cellphone sexting episode spread by students in neighboring Kings Park that caused about 20 suspensions there, school officials said. AJ Fenton said he was one of the suspended students.

One of the arrested boys had engaged in an off-campus sexual encounter with a girl as the other boy recorded the encounter on a cellphone, police said. The teenagers were not named because they are minors, and police would not release details.

More arrests are not expected in the case, but the investigation is continuing, Suffolk police said Tuesday.

Smithtown schools Superintendent James Grossane, in a letter posted Tuesday on the district's website, called the allegations "a very serious legal matter that the district does not take lightly."

The district, he wrote, "will be conducting our own investigation to further explore this incident, and students found to be involved may face serious disciplinary consequences for violation of the district's code of conduct."

Kings Park Superintendent Timothy Eagen said Monday night that about 20 students there had been suspended for periods of between one and five days. School officials got an anonymous tip Thursday about the images, and students were seen "huddled" around cellphones that day during lunch, he said.

Fenton on Tuesday accused school officials of "selectively prosecuting" students including his son, who he said did nothing wrong and should not be in trouble for receiving an image he had nothing to do with.

In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon, Eagen said the district "has conducted and completed a thorough investigation surrounding the alleged sexting incident. The district believes that all student suspensions in relation to this alleged incident have been made in accordance with the district's code of conduct. At this time, we do not anticipate any further suspensions."

Most of the suspensions were for one day and they were given to boys and girls, Eagen said. Students who possessed or saw the images got lighter punishment; those who possessed and distributed them got up to five days' suspension, the superintendent said.

Eagen said Monday night the suspended students were asked to write down what happened and sign it.

The superintendent said students weren't suspended just because they were sent the image but because they violated the student code of conduct by failing to alert an adult about something that was wrong.

"What baffles me is that some of these materials were floating around for as much as 10 days and no young person that we were aware of told an adult . . . Parents are not getting that their child has some culpability," Eagen said.

He said he feels "bad" for these students but suggested they need to pick their friends wisely. The superintendent questioned "why they're upset at the school and not at the person who forwarded it to them."

Students arrived at school shortly after 7:15 a.m. Tuesday to about half a dozen media trucks and reporters outside the school. Crossing guards directed students into the school as Suffolk police stood by their cars outside. By shortly after 10 a.m., police had left the school.

Senior Lauren Koniuch, 17, said the students who unwittingly received the image should not have been punished. Koniuch said she did not see the image.

"The people that sent it around, I understand that, but people that received it without even asking for it -- it's really not right," she said. "Social media is really not the greatest thing in this generation."

Fenton, 49, of Fort Salonga, and Thomas Phelan, 50, of Kings Park, told Newsday on Monday that the Kings Park district notified them Friday that their sons, both 10th-graders, had been suspended from classes for two days.

Both dads showed up to the school Tuesday morning. They said the district questioned students and suspended some without first notifying parents that an investigation was underway.

Eagen said Monday that school officials have the authority to question students during internal investigations without parents being present.

In a letter to parents dated Monday and posted on the school website, he wrote in more detail about his disappointment that no students had alerted school officials about the sexting episode.

Eagen recently had a parent come to see him about what the parent described as "a serious problem." By the end of the conversation, Eagen said, he came to understand that from that parent's perspective, the "serious problem" was that if the superintendent did not overturn a student suspension, he was going to the media.

"Yes, WE do have a serious problem," Eagen said in the letter. "However, from my perspective it is that our young people are carrying mini computers in their back pockets that are both unfiltered and largely unsupervised. This is a shared problem, and more than just an issue of one student, one decision, or one suspension."

"The thing that deeply upsets me is that very few, if any, of our students districtwide reported any recent problematic behaviors to an adult. This I find troubling. There is a law on the books called the 911 Good Samaritan Law, where a person cannot be arrested for calling 911 if they are with someone in immediate need of attention. My goal over the next few months is to work with our principals and parents to get the word out that we need our young people to be good citizens and report problematic behavior to an adult."

Eagan wrote: "In most cases, no school discipline would result for the reporter/upstander. On the contrary, the young person would certainly be rewarded for helping to make Kings Park a safer place to live and go to school."

Phelan said he was called by police Monday night and was told his son would be arrested if he came to school. Phelan said his son, whom he declined to identify, was too upset to come to school Tuesday morning.

Phelan previously said that his son had not actually seen any indecent photos or videos himself.

In a statement Monday, the district said it was looking into student involvement with "inappropriate" photos or videos at Kings Park High School and at William T. Rogers Middle School.

Both Eagen and one of the fathers described the images being sent around as a video.

The Smithtown boys were charged with promoting a sexual performance by a child and disseminating indecent material to minors, both Class D felonies, and third-degree sexual abuse, a misdemeanor. They are scheduled to appear in Family Court at an unspecified date.

Smithtown, in a statement, identified the two boys as being in high school, but did not specify which of the district's two high schools they attend.

Eagen and Grossane both had issued statements earlier that stressed the hazards of teenagers sharing obscene images of themselves and others via electronic devices -- incidents that have emerged as a growing national problem.

Eagen also had posted a letter on the district's website Sunday urging parents to talk to their children about the perils of sharing indecent pictures via electronic devices.

"Often these images can never completely be deleted from the device. In addition, phone apps make the distribution of these images quick and easy," he wrote. "Once in the hands of social media, these pictures/videos can go viral, often resulting in serious implications."

Such "sexting" incidents -- described as an epidemic by some school counselors -- recently made national headlines in Canon City, Colorado. That's a quiet municipality of about 16,000 residents, located in scenic territory a two-hour drive south of Denver.

Authorities there disclosed at a news conference Friday that at least 100 students at Canon City High School had circulated nude pictures of themselves via cellphone. Some involved in the "selfie" exchanges were eighth-graders, officials said.

In New York, as in other states, distributing obscene images of minors generally is treated as a felony. A dilemma arises, legal experts have noted, when all those involved in such exchanges are minors themselves.

State law provides that young people found guilty of sending and receiving such images may be assigned to corrective education programs providing up to eight hours of instruction, rather than jailed. Such persons must be under 20 years of age, and within five years of age from one another.

With Ellen Yan and Tania Lopez

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