Randall Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 Teacher fired for viewing pornography sues district By TOM KERTSCHER tkertscher@journalsentinel.com Posted: April 16, 2008 In a $9 million civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday, the former Cedarburg teacher fired for viewing pornography on his school computer said he did a search that turned up the adult images only because he wanted to see if the school district had installed software to block such images. The statement in the federal suit is the first time that Robert Zellner, who is also asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to give him his job back, has explained publicly why he viewed the adult images for 67 seconds on a Sunday. The statement suggests that Zellner was trying to act to protect students who used the Cedarburg High School computers from inadvertently accessing pornographic material. Defendants in the suit are the Cedarburg School District, the district's lawyer, the superintendent, an administrator and School Board President John Pendergast. Pendergast declined to comment. Zellner's lawyer in the new suit is former state assistant attorney general and former Foley & Lardner partner Michael Erhard of Madison. He said Cedarburg school officials retaliated against Zellner for his union activities not only to get rid of him, but also to intimidate the union, which he described as having been marginalized since Zellner's firing. Erhard also said Zellner's Google images search of the word "blonde," which turned up pictures and information advertising pornographic Web sites, was "relatively innocuous, and they distorted it totally out of proportion and they did it for the purpose of destroying him, and they did." The complaint alleges that the defendants violated Zellner's free speech rights in his union activities and his due process rights in the way he was terminated. It asks for $9 million in compensatory and punitive damages. Erhard said Zellner has applied for about a half-dozen teaching positions in the Milwaukee area since being fired and has been a finalist for some of them. He said he believes Zellner was not hired because the school districts learned why he was fired. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Irish Doggy Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 You know, if he was only on a porn website for 67 seconds, I kinda believe his story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azazello1313 Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 he searches "blonde", views the thumbnails for 67 seconds, and gets fired? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
westvirginia Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 From the stuff in the article, I'm actually with this guy... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
untateve Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 he searches "blonde", views the thumbnails for 67 seconds, and gets fired? I can rub one out in half that time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rebellab Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 And btw don't search for blonde on your work computer with image safe search off. The first two pages is pron. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
McBoog Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 1) This is what you ask your IT people to check and verify 2) It was on a Sunday 3) We don’t know what, if anything was found on his computer (did they do a forensic examination? Did they find any files downloaded other than cookies and thumbnail images?) 4) What was the search criteria entered? 5) 67 seconds is a long time once you have established the ability to access. Print page and close the browser. Go immediately to your boss and IT department. 6) Where was the computer. His office, student access area? 7) What are the established policies of the employer? 8) Who discovered the violation? Was it self-reported or did an IT person find out and report it? 9) What kind of porn did he access (some is harder to find than others) 10)We only have one side of the story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Randall Posted April 17, 2008 Author Share Posted April 17, 2008 From an earlier story- School officials said they began monitoring Zellner's computer in November 2004 after it had to be reconfigured for the second time because "pop up" ads for adult Web sites repeatedly appeared on his computer. A filter meant to limit access to certain sites had been turned off. The monitoring found that Zellner accessed five sites, which School District attorney James Korom described as "hard-core pornography," for one minute and seven seconds on Nov. 6, a Sunday. That was about three months after Zellner and other teachers signed a revised policy on school computer use, which, among other things, prohibited accessing or sending offensive messages or pictures. Three of the sites show images of sex acts on their home pages. The other two sites show nude females on their home pages. Korom said Zellner viewed the images for about 20 seconds at a time, which he described as "a long time when you've got a screen of pornography in front of you." At one point, Korom stopped the hearing for 20 seconds to depict that time frame. Zellner's lawyer, Jina Jonen, said Zellner acknowledged visiting the sites on Nov. 9 while doing school work. But she said Zellner told school officials, when they confronted him Dec. 20, that he may have used the school computer to access such sites on only one other occasion. That differed markedly from testimony by Superintendent Daryl Herrick about his meeting with Zellner, during which Zellner was asked to resign. Herrick and Zellner had clashed when Zellner served as president of the Cedarburg teachers union, a post he held until last year. According to Herrick, Zellner said he used the school computer to access the Web sites on "numerous" occasions, about once a month, and that on some occasions he did so shortly after dismissal time on school days. Herrick said the district searched Zellner's computer for evidence of him visiting the sites on occasions in addition to Nov. 9, but found no such instances. He indicated that might have been because of limitations in the search technology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avernus Posted April 17, 2008 Share Posted April 17, 2008 I can rub one out in half that time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.