The Burleson Police Department is reportedly investigating identity theft in the case of a Burleson high school coach who was accused of an improper online relationship with a 16-year-old student.
Bryce Benekos, an English teacher and assistant football and baseball coach at Centennial High School, denied involvement and said he was on his honeymoon when the conversations took place last summer. The Tarrant County district attorney declined to prosecute for lack of evidence.
http://liarcatchers.com/identity_theft_investigation.html
Police Cmdr. Doug Sandifer confirmed Friday that there is an investigation but did not give details about its nature. Benekos’ wife, Kaitlin, however, said police told them they have “reopened the case” and are looking into who impersonated her husband online.
“This is terrifying for teachers,” she said.
Burleson school Superintendent Richard Crummel said he did not know about the police inquiry and said Benekos, who was put on paid administrative leave in August, will remain employed through the school year but won’t be offered a contract for next year.
“If additional information comes forward from law enforcement, we will be happy to examine it,” Crummel said.
Larry Shaw, executive director of the United Educators Association, said the number of incidents involving impersonation of teachers online has increased dramatically.
“We are having kids create false Facebook and Twitter accounts [to impersonate teachers] and sending out messages to other students and people. School districts and the Legislature have not dealt with toughening laws to penalize students who pretend to be teachers,” he said.
Shaw added that most students are juveniles and that it is difficult to get information if an incident involving a teacher is reported.
“We have enough problems with real cases to have phony cases out there,” Shaw said.
Chat services
Benekos, 28, was in his second year at Centennial. He previously taught at Franklin High School in El Paso for four years. Benekos said previously that he wants to keep his job and that he misses his students and friends in the district.
“The whole thing is bogus,” Benekos said in a previous interview. “This all happened two weeks after I got married.”
In early August, Burleson police were told that a 16-year-old girl had been having inappropriate conversations with a high school coach via the Skype chat service and that the girl’s stepfather had found the conversations on her laptop, according to police reports.
The girl identified the coach as Benekos. The conversations took place mostly in late June through mid-July, according to reports. They began on Stickam, a chat website, and moved to Skype.
While Stickam and Skype offer video services, users can also chat by text or audio. Someone can chat on either without being seen.
The girl never saw Benekos via video. In the police reports, a person identified as Benekos asks to see pictures of the girl wearing a sports bra and a bikini. There is also an exchange about having a liaison in a janitor’s closet at school. The 16-year-old told police that she never undressed for the Skype messages but did show photographs of herself in a striped bikini.
The girl said she ended the conversations because she feared getting into trouble, reports say.
Police searched the coach’s home and school computers, according to documents obtained by the Star-Telegram. A Secret Service examination found evidence of the conversations on the girl’s computer, but nothing was found on the Skype account that Benekos’ wife had on their devices.
The Secret Service agent told police that Benekos could have had the conversations even if no record exists.
But the agent also said someone could have impersonated him on Skype.
Union advice
Melissa Mozingo, an attorney with the United Educators Association, said she advises teachers to Google themselves periodically to make sure there are no false social media accounts or websites.
“Inappropriateness has risen to a level that we haven’t seen before. Most generations have been brought up to respect their elders. I think that has gone away,” she said.
Mozingo said she is looking at school districts’ policies to see what the penalties are for students who pretend to be teachers or other adults. The districts don’t look at administrative leave as punitive, but teachers do, she said.
“There is a presumption of guilt. We are afraid this teacher is going to do something to the kids. Let’s get them out of the building. …” Mozingo said. “It’s an unfortunate situation for the districts to be in and for the teachers.”
