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October 24, 2004

Teacher faces porn charges

Suspect previously worked in Ocala

BY FRANK STANFIELD -- LOCAL NEWS EDITOR -- starbanner.com

TAVARES - Police have arrested a Lake County elementary school teacher - who was a former counselor at an Ocala mental health treatment center - on 16 counts of possession of child pornography.

James L. Church, 53, of Leesburg, had not been teaching at Fruitland Park Elementary long - he was hired on Sept. 29 - but he was teaching "special needs" children, said Principal Charlie McDaniel. He is also a former probation officer, in one instance, acting as a court-appointed counselor in a highly publicized Lake County case.

Russell Rasco, executive director of The Centers, in Ocala, was not certain Friday how long Church had worked at the mental health facility.

"All I know is to tell you that this gentleman did work for us for a short period of time. He doesn't work for us now.

"I think it was probably in 2003 or maybe early in 2004. It was not a very long period of time," he said.

"We do background checks on everybody. If he didn't pass the background check, he would not have worked for us. When he came to us, he evidently had nothing in his record."

The same holds true for teachers, who must be fingerprinted, and undergo drug testing and a background check. Before working at the elementary school, he had worked at Clermont Middle School in south Lake County. School personnel records were not available Friday, but there was "nothing like this" in his leaving that school, McDaniel said.

McDaniel said he met with the parents of the students. There is nothing to indicate the students were victimized, he said.

"The School Board is investigating," Lake schools spokeswoman Janice Karst said.

McDaniel said Church resigned his position.

Besides the child porn charges, a woman has made sworn statements in court papers saying that Church molested her as a child, starting at age 3.

She wrote: "I can't sleep. I can't eat knowing he really did rape me. Knowing that he has been listening to other victims of sex abuse in his position of a mental health counselor and that he may have molested other kids."

Church declined to comment Friday to the Star-Banner. He is still being held in the Lake County jail, pending payment of $80,000 bail.

Church was arrested Wednesday, the result of a Leesburg Police Department investigation that has been going on since May 30. His estranged wife, Cheryl, told officers that pornography videos were discovered on the family's computer a month earlier. She said she demanded that the material be removed, but later discovered the same files and new ones.

Police executed a search warrant on June 2, seizing computer drives, 180 video tapes and other materials but nothing of evidentiary value, according to police reports.

But on July 12, Church called police again, saying that when she was cleaning a storage area she found a ZIP disk and one floppy diskette, and she found other items the next day.

One of the recordings seized was a home recording of the PG-rated commercial movie "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas."

At the end of the movie, there was a commercial X-rated recording of adults engaged in sex acts.

"This is a common practice of pedophiles to introduce children to sexual activity, as something normal as it appears on a movie," wrote Leesburg Police Cpl. Gary Barrett in his affidavit of probable cause.

Court records said Cheryl Church found more material on Aug. 2, including child pornography.

Lake County court records also show that Cheryl Church filed an injunction for protection and that she filed for divorce in June.

"I believe Jim will hurt me or try to kill me for taking the computer to the police," she wrote.

The woman who said Church molested her as a child said she, too, feared for her life. She said the 300-pound, 6-foot-1 Church is an ex-Navy SEAL who has beaten her in the past and "could break me like a twig." Court records indicate he owns martial arts weapons.

Church has not been charged with any kind of rape or molestation. The State Attorney's Office in Tavares is handling the case.

Church is a familiar name to Lake County prosecutors. In 1994, he was the probation officer for Linda Rozar, a well-known activist who was involved in a controversial program to place babies born to women prisoners with Christian families, which was allegedly outside state rules regarding foster children placement. Rozar's husband, meanwhile, was convicted of lewd and lascivious acts on a child in a highly publicized case and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

She was then arrested and charged with witness tampering and child abuse in that case. Rozar got into hot water in her case with the courts when Church told a judge that she failed to show up for court-ordered counseling.

Posted by Nealus at October 24, 2004 02:35 PM

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