Teacher: Wrong Computer Click Ruined My Life

Jan. 27, 2009 — -- In 2004 Julie Amero was a 37-year-old substitute teacher who looked forward to the impending birth of her first child and enjoyed educating students.

But her life took a drastic turn on Oct. 19 of that year and now, four years later, Amero has a scarred reputation and said she has suffered emotional distress after facing serious pornography charges that destroyed her teaching career.

"Everybody out there should be afraid," the now 42-year-old Amero said on "Good Morning America" today. "If it can happen to me it can certainly happen to you."

Amero started that fateful school day at Kelly Middle School in Norwich, Conn., by checking her personal e-mail and then she stepped out of the classroom to use the bathroom. While she was away from her desk, the computer began displaying a flurry of pornographic images.

She returned to find two students giggling at the computer screen. Amero said she tried to close the inappropriate images, but to no avail.

"The pop-ups never went away. It was one after another. They were continuous. Every time I clicked the box in the corner, the red box, the red X, more were generated," she said according to a court transcript.

For several hours she says she tried to get the images of "women in lingerie, bathing suits" and more to stop. What Amero didn't do, though, was shut down the computer.

"I didn't even know where the button was," she said, "never been shown, never been told."

Amero said she wasn't computer savvy and had limited knowledge of how to use the device.

"[My husband] had just taught me recently how to do the computer," Amero said.

She alerted the school's vice principal about the incident on her break and the administrator initially told her not to worry.

But then several angry parents who learned of the incident from their children called the school to complain.

"I knew there was a problem the third day at the end of that school day," Amero said.

"At the time no big deal was made of it. Then kids went home, told their parents and it exploded from there," said Hartford Courant newspaper columnist Rick Green, who has followed the case.

The school notified police and told Amero she could never work as a substitute teacher again. Shortly afterward she was arrested on 10 counts of risk of injury to a minor.