A high school teacher in North Carolina was allegedly part of a Snapchat group with students that traded pictures of their penises and exchanged hundreds of illicit text messages with phone numbers that investigators believe are connected to his former students.
Michael Kelly, a one-time teacher of the year at Isaac Bear Early College High School in Wilmington, is expected to make a court appearance Tuesday in connection to his arrest earlier this month on charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and indecent liberties with a student, WECT reports.
Kelly, who had already been arrested for sex crimes involving at least five students, is now facing 28 new charges with 10 additional reported victims after a meeting with a detective and an appearance before a magistrate, according to the station.
Authorities were first alerted to Kelly, 48, after a parent found what they believed to be pornographic images of children on their child’s phone, according to a search warrant obtained by the station. The 15-year-old victim told FBI investigators on Feb. 2 that the sexually explicit image was sent to him by Kelly, a teacher for New Hanover County Schools since 1992.
The student also reported that he and other students at the school regularly had sexually explicit conversations with Kelly during lunch in his classroom, where he would discuss his sexual history with women and at least one incident in which he described watching pornography with a friend and masturbating, according to the search warrant.
The victim also reported that Kelly, along with other students at the school, was a member of a Snapchat group that traded pictures of their penises on social media.
Kelly, according to the warrant, also touched the boy’s buttocks inappropriately during one incident last year and intentionally showed him his penis inside the school’s student restroom on another occasion.
The teen also reported that Kelly showed him a picture of his penis on his cell phone and was able to recognize distinctive features of the teacher’s genitalia.
A review of cell phone records found that Kelly exchanged more than 250 texts messages with the teen between May 2017 and last January. Separately, Kelly sent and received more than 500 text messages with at least four phone numbers believed to be associated with his now-former students, including some of the Snapchat group, according to the teen victim.
Kelly has since been suspended without pay and will be terminated, WECT reported earlier this month. District officials said they were cooperating with law enforcement officials in the ongoing investigation. Messages seeking additional comment on Tuesday were not immediately returned.
Kelly remained held on $1.5 million at the New Hanover County Detention Center on Tuesday. He is facing at least 17 counts of indecent liberties with a student, sexual exploitation of a minor and other charges, according to jail records. He acknowledged making “some bad choices” during his initial court appearance earlier this month, WECT reports.
“I’ve done a lot of good work in the school system and I made some bad choices,” Kelly told a judge.