WHAT A HEEL: Public School Tech Director Downloaded Child Porn
The FBI filed a search warrant with the Western District of MI U.S. District Court July 29 requesting permission to search the school-issued laptop, USB thumb drive and a personal external hard drive of former Saugatuck Public Schools technology director Paul Gust Paul Gust, 45. A computer forensic investigation allegedly found more than 600 pornographic images on the laptop - as many as 70 of them included minors, along with several Websites "indicative of child pornography" – but the firm had not examined the thumb drive or the external hard drive.
According to the FBI search warrant affidavit, Gust allegedly used the MacBook laptop to search for a braless photo of pop singer Miley Cyrus, who was under the age of 18 at the time. The district sent the computer to Rehmann Group for analysis after a middle/high school paraprofessional whose sixth-grade daughter was present in the room saw "at least four pictures of nude women" projected on a plasma TV screen when Gust was preparing for a school board presentation displayed on November 1, 2010, The Allegan County News reports:
The employee present stepped in front of the computer before her daughter saw the image. …
The employee reported the image to middle/high school principal Tim Travis the next day, Nov. 2.
Travis took possession of the computer and "other district technology, including flash drives" that day.
The Allegan County News also reports that tenure charges were filed against Gust in December, a month after his colleague accidentally saw some of the pervy images on his laptop:
Gust was suspended with pay while an administrative law judge heard his case, as required by the Teacher Tenure Act.
On July 22, the judge granted the school district summary disposition and revoked Gust's tenure.
He has since been fired.
This is not the first time Gust has been in trouble for having pornography on a school computer.
He was suspended for three days from Zeeland Public Schools in 1998 for having downloaded images while on the school's network, an act he said he has not repeated.
Gust resigned from that job the following spring after receiving a job in Saugatuck.
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