Investigators claim that a man from Arizona was attempting to teach his girlfriend’s daughter a lesson by sending a nude photo of her to 38 contacts in the girl’s phone, according to AOL. The culprit, 31 year old Eugene Foster from San Tan Valley, found a nude photo of the girl on her phone and became incensed.
“They get into a fight and during that discussion boyfriend decides I’m going to teach you a lesson I’m going to send this out to 30 plus contacts on her phone and that’s what he did,” said Elias Johnson, spokesman for the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office, according to Fox News.
The Florence Unified School District’s director of public relations, Dana Hawman, said that authorities are not sure which students in the district received the nude photo of the girl.
“We do not know who all of those contacts were, and cannot assume that they were restricted to any one school or grade level,” Hawman said. “In fact, we believe some of these contacts were parents.”
The school district immediately sent notice to parents to discuss the issue of nude photos with their children. The statement read:
“Sharing nude photos of minors via text, email or Internet is in violation of child pornography laws. If you or your child has received this or similar messages, please delete immediately.”
The Sheriff’s Office from Pinal County says that anyone who received the photo should not delete it. Instead, they should contact the office to meet with authorities. Foster has been charged with sexual exploitation of a minor and remains in Pinal County Jail in lieu of $250,000 bail.
Those who received the photo were students at Poston Butte High School in San Tan Valley.
“To spread this photo further would not only add to the devastating embarrassment of one of our students, making a bad situation worse, it would make the sender subject to severe legal consequences,” Hawman said. “The welfare of our students is always our top priority, and we appreciate your assistance in minimizing the damage done by one adult’s poor choices.”
Johnson also said that anyone who received the photo and decided it would be fun to forward the photo to more people also could be charged with a crime, according to Phoenix New Times.
The mother of the girl in the photo told authorities that she did not know who received the photo sent by her boyfriend, which urged her to ask the district to send out a message to the students regarding nude photos. It was not immediately known if the mother of the girl in the photo would be pressing her own charges against her boyfriend, or if she had ended the relationship with him because of this event.