High School Teacher Whose Sexy Photos Were Shared by Student Wants Job Back
Leigh Anne Arthur says she’ll file criminal charges against the student.
— -- A South Carolina teacher is fighting to get her job back after a student took and shared partially nude photos of her from her phone without her knowledge, resulting in school officials’ pressuring her to resign, she said.
Leigh Anne Arthur told ABC News that the photos were meant for her husband. She said when she briefly left the phone last month in her classroom at Union County High School in Union, South Carolina, a male student in her class looked through her device, found the photos and sent them to other students.
“You don't think about someone invading your privacy like that,” Arthur said.
“Everybody that you look at you ask, 'Had they seen it'? Or, 'What exactly did they see?'" Arthur said. "It's the weirdest feeling. It makes you just want to ball up and just stay there."
Arthur resigned from her teaching position Feb. 24, nearly a week after the incident and after what she describes as pressure from school officials.
In a statement to ABC News, the district’s superintendent, David Eubanks, wrote that Arthur could have prevented the problem if she was “properly supervising” the students. He added that “evidence indicates that students routinely used the teacher’s cellphone with her full permission.”
Arthur denies the school district's allegations.
"I did not let students routinely use my phone," she told ABC News. "I allowed my nephew, who was enrolled in my mechatronics class, [to] use it one day."
Arthur explained that she wasn’t away from her phone for more than three minutes.
“As teachers, we go out in the hallway, stand at the door, greet the kids as they come in and also monitor the hallways and that's what I was doing," Arthur said of the Feb. 18 incident.
Arthur argues that the photos were private and meant as a Valentine’s Day surprise for her husband. She believes the unidentified student was in the wrong, and said she plans to file criminal charges against him, as well as a lawsuit against the school.
"These students are high school age students," Arthur said. "They know what right and wrong is and chose to do the actions they did."
"There is no excuse for his actions," she said of the student. "I am more mature than trying to play a blame game that school officials want to play. Wrong is wrong. All I want is justice."
The school has not yet disciplined the teen, but officials say they’ll act after their investigation is over.
Some of Arthur's students have started an online petition to have her reinstated.
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