Substitute teacher charged with child porn distribution

HAMMOND, Ind. — A northwestern Indiana man charged with distributing images of the sexual torture of children as young as 4 months had worked as a substitute teacher in at least three area school districts, federal officials said.

Michael T. Wilson, 25, of Valparaiso had a child pornography collection of at least 90,000 images and videos, and FBI agents found that he used a file-sharing Web site to trade the material, according to court documents.

School district officials reported no complaints about Wilson from his substitute teaching work.

Court documents said several of the photos show adults having sex with prepubescent children, with some images showing boys and girls, including toddlers and babies, being tied up and sexually abused.

A federal judge Monday ordered Wilson jailed pending a detention hearing on Thursday. A message seeking comment was left Wednesday for his defense attorney, Clark Holesinger.

Wilson isn’t charged with producing any of the child pornography, and he has not been accused of any misconduct with students, including from his work at a Merrillville agency for autistic and other developmentally disabled children.

U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Mary Hatton said she couldn’t provide information on possible additional investigations.

FBI investigators reported that an agent using a child porn convict’s file-sharing account first encountered Wilson’s online material in 2007, but it took more than two years to trace him to his Valparaiso apartment.

Wilson had been a substitute teacher in recent weeks at the Portage Township and Duneland districts in Porter County and for two days last September at the Lake Central district in Lake County, school officials said.

Portage schools Assistant Superintendent E. Ric Frataccia said Wilson had cleared a criminal background check.

“Criminal checks don’t check on current behavior,” Frataccia said. “They check on whether you were indicted before.”