Former Watterson Teacher Charged with Producing Child Pornography

By Earl Rinehart
Columbus Dispatch
October 2, 2015

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/10/02/Sze_charged.html

A former Watterson High School teacher accused of having sexual contact with an underage male student from the high school was charged today with producing child pornography.

Brian Sze, who was assistant director of music at Watterson last school year, is accused in a federal complaint of giving his phone to the boy and telling him to record himself masturbating at Sze’s Lewis Center home.

The boy told investigators that he and Sze also watched pornography together. Investigators said they found sexually explicit emails and text messages from Sze on two of the student’s electronic devices.

The acts occurred between April 2014 and May 2015, according to the complaint filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in Columbus.

Production of child pornography is punishable by 15 to 30 years in prison.

Sze was arrested on Tuesday in Seattle, where he was working at a private school after leaving Watterson following the 2014-15 school year.

Federal investigators who searched Sze’s Seattle home said Sze admitted having sexual contact with the student and telling the boy to record himself masturbating, according to the complaint.

In a letter to families, Joseph Brettnacher, superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Columbus, said Sze was fired on June 15 after admitting that he sent inappropriate text messages to a student and the matter was reported to the Ohio Department of Education.

“At that time, there was absolutely no other indication of any other wrongdoing,” the letter says. “At the time of his termination we had no knowledge or suspicion of any sexual contact or sexual abuse.”

Officials at the private Lakeside School in Seattle, where Sze worked, said Watterson officials knew Sze had sent an inappropriate text message to another student not related to the criminal case.

Lakeside officials said they received four positive references from Sze’s former colleagues at Watterson and St. Brigid of Kildare in Dublin, where he also taught. One was Sze’s superior, the band director at Watterson. But none of the references at the schools said why Sze left.

Brettnacher said Lakeside did not contact a Watterson administrator or diocesan official.

“Had either of these contact points for official references been contacted, the inquiring party would have been informed that Mr. Sze’s employment was involuntarily terminated,” he wrote in his letter to families.

Sze was being held in Seattle on Friday until he can be returned to central Ohio to answer the charge.

Contact: erinehart@dispatch.com