Da: Newton Teacher Was Involved in Online Child Pornography Forum

By Ashley Studley
Newton Tab
January 19, 2012

http://www.wickedlocal.com/newton/news/x886301054/DA-Newton-teacher-was-involved-in-online-child-pornography-forum#axzz1k1gEFMwC

Dave Ettlinger's Facebook profile picture.

A spokesman for the Suffolk District Attorney’s office today confirmed a Newton second-grade teacher is part of a federal investigation of an online child pornography community.

Spokesman Jake Wark said David Ettlinger, 34, of Brighton, was part of “Dreamboard”, an online forum that operated out of Louisiana.

In August, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced they’d broken up an international network dedicated to the creation and sharing of child pornography.

Authorities launched the investigation in 2009, which targeted 72 individuals and 500 other participants from around the world.

In a press release, Holder and Napolitano said Dreamboard was a members-only online forum that promoted pedophilia and sexual abuse of young children.

Officials said Dreamboard’s administrators required prospective members to upload child pornography portraying children 12 years old or younger when applying for membership. Members were required to continually upload images of child sex abuse in order to maintain membership.

In August, 52 of the 72 charged had been arrested both nationally and internationally. All 72 are charged with conspiring to advertise and distribute child pornography, and 50 of them were also charged with engaging in a child pornography enterprise.

Ettlinger was arrested at his Commonwealth Avenue home on Jan. 17 and charged with two counts of possessing child pornography.

At his arraignment at Brighton District Court that day, prosecutors said they found hundred of images of child pornography, and a video of Ettlinger sexually assaulting a girl under 14.

Ettlinger was held on $10,000 cash bail and arraigned at West Roxbury District Court Wednesday on separate charges – indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 and posing a child in a state of nudity.

He was ordered held on $100,000 cash bail, and ordered to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet and stay away from children if he posts bail.

Ettlinger, a 1995 graduate of Newton South High, was as an elementary teacher in the Newton district for 12 years. He most recently served as a second-grade teacher at Underwood Elementary School and was terminated on Jan. 18.

Ettlinger was a boy’s gymnastics coach at Newton South High in 2000, an adviser for a community service program at Underwood and previously worked as a camp counselor at the JCC Grossman Camp and instructor at the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center.

It is currently unclear how Ettlinger was involved in Dreamboard. A call to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana has not been returned yet.