Despite claiming he was creating art, an Orland Park elementary school Dean has been found guilty of taking naked pictures of a 10-year-old boy in his office.
David Cech, 32, a former dean of discipline at Strassburg School in 2006, says the boy -- who is 14 now and enrolled in a different school -- came up with the idea to pose naked for the pictures as a way to atone for bad behavior, reports the Chicago Tribune.
In his testimony the boy said he at first refused to take off his clothes until Cech threatened to expel him.
The photographs came to the police’s attention when a teacher who went to Cech’s office to use the phone, flipped through the images in Cech’s camera, and spotted close-up pictures of a boy’s genitals. The teacher later went back, grabbed the camera and took it to the police.
Assistant State’s Attorney Cordelia Coppleson believes Cech picked the boy, who was considered a troublemaker, because his credibility would be questioned.
"A grown man -- the dean of students ... took these photos of (a boy's) private parts," she told the Tribune. "His parents dropped him off at school every day thinking he'll be safe."
Cech’s defense attorney Jack Rodgon argued that the pictures weren’t pornographic but were akin to art and said the boy was posed similar to the David sculpture in Florence. “That is considered great art by the majority of the world,” he said.
