Other Students Reported Sexual Messages from Educational Assistant
A handful of other students also reported sexual messages from a Hawaii educational assistant charged with exchanging sexually explicit text messages with a 12-year-old student.
Niu Valley Middle School principal Justin Mew told Civil Beat Friday that “a handful of students and parents” submitted formal complaints against 25-year-old Cody M. Onizuka during a Hawaii Department of Education investigation in 2010, but only one was willing to press criminal charges.
Onizuka was indicted Tuesday in Hawaii’s first “sexting” case to result in criminal charges. He was charged by an Oahu grand jury with promoting child abuse via the sexually explicit text messages. Onizuka has since been dismissed.
“There were other complainants,” Mew said. “In the end, the only one to really step forward to press charges was the one.”
Mew said he dealt with the issue quickly, and within days got approval to put the educational assistant on leave so investigations could continue.
Investigating the allegations was difficult at first, the principal said, because many of the online social networking websites Onizuka used to interact with students — Facebook, for example — are blocked from computer users on the Department of Education network. Mew had to get special permission to access the sites in question. It was also a challenge to follow the various user names employed by Onizuka and the victims, because they sometimes changed and did not represent the real names of the people using them.
The real breakthrough came when one parent provided transcripts of some of Onizuka’s exchanges with students.
“There was at least one parent that gave me a whole stack of messages and it was clear something was not right,” Mew said. “Up until that point, there were many complaints that were anonymous, but once somebody actually put a signature to it, things changed. Once that stack came in, it was a matter of days before we got him off campus.”
Promoting child abuse includes possession of child pornography and is punishable with up to five years in prison and a $10,000 fine, according to a press release from Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Keith Kaneshiro.
The indictment states that Onizuka in 2010 tried to engage in a sexual relationship with the student and disregarded a restraining order the child’s mother obtained against him. He is also accused of persuading the child to text him nude photographs of herself, which he then used in a series of “sexting” episodes with her.
