MEDFORD, Ore. — “Safety is obviously our number one priority and we want students to feel safe. We want families to feel safe sending their students to our campuses,” said Brent Barry, Phoenix-Talent school district superintendent.
That was a message from Barry last year after a 41-year-old man posing as a dad snuck into a Talent Middle School locker room.
The man, Curtis Stevenson, was sentenced to a decade in prison on Wednesday.
“Our staff went and met with him and he was posing as a perspective parent and asking questions about enrolling his son,” said Barry.
“He had his phone recording in the space between the door and the frame,” said Terry Smith-Norton, Jackson Co. senior deputy district attorney.
Norton says Stevenson, who was already a registered sex offender, was found hiding in a bathroom stall by a teacher.
She says he was there for 3 hours.
“He also took his phone underneath trying to film the stall next to him,” she said.
After being discovered in the locker room, Stevenson was told to leave campus by school staff.
Police were called several hours later.
A girl whose phone was stolen by the sex offender says they tracked him down using the find I-Phone feature.
“You should have gotten into treatment a long time ago,” said Jackson Co. Circuit Court Judge Lorenzo Mejia.
In court, Stevenson apologized to the community and to the victims.
“Because I’m a parent myself, I can imagine what they went through thinking of the scenarios and everything,” said Stevenson.
Thankfully, Norton says none of the young girls were naked in the recordings.
Stevenson pleaded guilty to 5 of the 9 counts of attempting to use a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct.
“I think he deserves time in prison and hopefully when he’s released from prison, will engage in treatment or whatever’s necessary to keep the public safe,” she said.
The D.A.’s office says Stevenson will be get 2 years post prison supervision after his 10 year sentence.
Because of the number of sex offenses on his record, Stevenson will never be eligible to get his sex offender registration off his record.
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