Thaindian News

HOUSTON (BNO NEWS) — A former Houston school teacher who watched child pornography while in class with students was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on Wednesday, prosecutors said.

Fernando Gonzalez, 35, was sentenced to 87 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Keith P. Ellison for possession of child pornography. He was also sentenced to a life term of supervised release.

Gonzalez was arrested on federal charges in December 2008 as the result of an investigation conducted by members of the Pasadena Independent School District Police Department and other agencies. He remained in federal custody since that arrest.

On May 14, 2008, students at North Shore High School in the Galena Park Independent School District walked by Gonzalez’s classroom and saw him looking at images of child pornography on his school computer. As he was watching the images, he was fondling himself.

The students told school administrators who subsequently confronted Gonzalez about what the students had seen. Gonzalez then showed school officials a large box containing 288 3.5″ computer disks that he identified as containing child pornography. Gonzalez was allowed to leave the school grounds and police were called. School administrators turned over the box of disks to law enforcement.

Gonzalez admitted to officers that the disks came from his collection and that he had more than 100 disks with pictures of, what he described as, naked little girls. He said he obtained the images through the Internet.

Because his wife had caught him watching child pornography at his home about two years earlier, Gonzalez had taken his collection on floppy disks to the school so his wife wouldn’t find out. Gonzalez admitted that he had looked at child pornography in his classroom with students present and has masturbated in his classroom while watching child pornography.

A forensic analysis of the floppy disks found they contained more than 4,000 images of child pornography. No such images were found on the school’s computer.

After Gonzalez is released from prison he will be subject to a life term of supervised release. Special conditions ordered by the court with which Gonzalez must comply or face the possibility of revocation and yet another prison sentence include his registering as a sex offender, participation in a sex offender treatment program, not reside or work within 100 feet of a school, park, playground or other places primarily used by children under the age of 18 nor have any contact with minors under the age of 18.