FBI: Award-Winning NYC Teacher Paid Teenage Boys for Illegal Nude Photos

Posted on | March 10, 2015 | 24 Comments

Jon Cruz is being held on $1 million bond.

Bronx Science High School is one of the top public schools in New York, and Jon Cruz was one of the school’s top teachers:

An award-winning debate team coach at a prominent New York City public high school faces child pornography charges after federal authorities say he posed as a teen on social media and paid underage boys thousands of dollars for nude photos of themselves.
Jon Cruz was a arrested Friday following an FBI investigation. He teaches social studies and coaches the debate team at New York City’s Bronx High School of Science, where he has won multiple awards for distinguished service since 2006.
Colleagues interviewed by the New York Daily News were “surprised” to learn of the allegations. One debate coach, who did not want to be named, told the paper that “no one ever heard anything untoward about [Cruz].”
On Friday, the FBI charged that Cruz allegedly used a photo of one of his former students as the profile picture on a text messaging app called Kik. He is accused of using the messenger to contact and coerce multiple victims into producing child porn. The FBI launched its probe of the teacher in December 2014 after the parents of one of the victims discovered their son’s exchanges with the alias.
Authorities say Cruz contacted underage boys posing as a 15- or 16-year-old student at the Dalton School in New York City. He told his victims that he was a “nerd” with rich parents who “had a thing for jocks,” chatted with them about sex, and paid them money for nude photos, according to charging documents.
One teen in New Mexico was paid $900 for pictures of his feet and face, and another received $1600 in gift cards in exchange for photos. Cruz sent a third victim $500 for nudes, and asked him to provide “names of other boys who would chat,” the documents said. . . .
“It takes a special depravity to produce child pornography. This type of insidious behavior must stop,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge Diego Rodriguez said in a news release. . . .
Cruz is held on $1 million bail.

This photo is from Cruz’s Facebook page:

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Category: Crime, Education, Gays, Sex

Comments

24 Responses to “FBI: Award-Winning NYC Teacher Paid Teenage Boys for Illegal Nude Photos”

RKae
March 10th, 2015 @ 7:17 pm

I am horrified – HORRIFIED! I want him executed, and…

Oh, wait. He’s not a Catholic priest? Oh. OK. Well, y’know, kids are a lot more sophisticated these days. In fact, any punishment dished out on him constitutes a homophobic attack.
Clivus Multrum
March 10th, 2015 @ 7:24 pm

And yet people still wonder why normal people are wary about homos.
Evi L. Bloggerlady
March 10th, 2015 @ 7:28 pm

I bet he emailed Hillary and she deleted the emails (Hillary’s does not care about boys).

How hard is the Teacher’s Union fighting to save his job?
Greg Toombs
March 10th, 2015 @ 7:38 pm

“Cruz is held on $1 million bail.” And yet he still won’t lose his union-protected job.
concern00
March 10th, 2015 @ 7:46 pm

…and watch them twist themselves in knots trying to classify this behavior as anything but homosexual.
Zohydro
March 10th, 2015 @ 8:06 pm

I’ve read he “can be a bit flamboyant at times…” and served as a faculty advisor to the Gay Straight Alliance at Bronx High School… I suspect there’s some gayness involved here!
Alec Leamas
March 10th, 2015 @ 8:10 pm

The debate coach thing presents the opportunity to chaperone debate and forensics tournaments, some of which may have required overnight travel in addition to the usual intense and unsupervised one-on-one and small group coaching outside of school hours. Math. You do it.
DeadMessenger
March 10th, 2015 @ 8:45 pm

He’s just helping some curious adolescents explore their sexuality. It’s all perfectly normal.
concern00
March 10th, 2015 @ 8:46 pm

GSA…otherwise known as the local LGBTIQWTFOMGBBQ recruitment and indoctrination center. I’m pretty sure Dan Savage wouldn’t mind some of these allies s-cking his d-ck.
DeadMessenger
March 10th, 2015 @ 8:54 pm

He’s a teacher, mmkay? Isn’t that what he’s paid to do? Teach youths – especially questioning youths – about alternative, yet perfectly normal and not deviant behaviors? And look, he’s also teaching business and economics. You are such a hatey-hater, you racist homophobe.
M. Thompson
March 10th, 2015 @ 9:20 pm

What the heck is it that gets people into this stuff?!?
Zohydro
March 10th, 2015 @ 9:22 pm

“Bronx Science has had troubles with pervy teachers in the past. In 1993, physics teacher Peter Melzer was suspended for his association with theNorth American Man/Boy Love Association…Melzer, who taught at the school for more than two decades, was kept on the payroll until he was fired in 2000.”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/teacher-kid-porn-arrest-stuns-colleagues-article-1.2141418
Adobe_Walls
March 10th, 2015 @ 10:01 pm

External restraints used to restrain people with no self restraint.
Jeanette Victoria
March 10th, 2015 @ 10:03 pm

I’m sure it was all consensual……
Jeanette Victoria
March 10th, 2015 @ 10:06 pm

Didn’t you know when a boy is under the age of consent he is a different gender
Kirby McCain
March 10th, 2015 @ 10:07 pm

Meanwhile, women who have actual sex with minors get probation.
Fail Burton
March 11th, 2015 @ 5:28 am

If gay folks were intersectional targets the way men are, feminist Twitter feeds would be loaded with sarcastic #NotAllGays when gays tried to point out how law and fair play work.
Steve Skubinna
March 11th, 2015 @ 6:18 am

Good God. Good ‘n’ Fruity. This is the work of… Captain Obvious!
Rob Crawford
March 11th, 2015 @ 6:56 am

I thought teachers were underpaid. Where’d he get that much disposable cash?
DeadMessenger
March 11th, 2015 @ 7:39 am

Indeed. And you know, adolescents are soooo good at consensual decision-making.

“Hey Billy, Tommy’s older brother bought some beer and we’re gonna ride our bikes out by the railroad tracks to drink it! Wanna go?”

“Yeah!”
Jeanette Victoria
March 11th, 2015 @ 7:44 am

Of course, ask any sexual predator!
Daniel Freeman
March 11th, 2015 @ 9:13 am

Kids are expensive. A bachelor without kids of his own can easily have money to spend on other people’s; he’s just doing it wrong.
Dignified Moments with Joe Biden | Regular Right Guy
March 11th, 2015 @ 1:15 pm

[…] FBI: Award-Winning NYC Teacher Paid Teenage Boys for Illegal Nude Photos […]
Grandson Of TheGrumpus
March 11th, 2015 @ 6:19 pm

The Assistant Director in Charge Diego Rodriguez is correct about it requiring “… a special depravity to produce child pornography.”
But I feel compelled to point out that it takes a “rotting” of the soul to defend child pornography…
You’d think it would be a rarity, wouldn’t you?

It is sad that so many people have lost their soul. Not that they shouldn’t be slowly castrated w/wooden butter knives— it’s just that the moral guardrails that once would have protected a person from “going over the cliff” and becoming a monster have been methodically and purposely removed from Life’s pathways. That leaves only those firm in Heavenly Father’s moral teaching, (however learned) to know where the morally safe and human pathway runs.
It’s those teachings, btw, that are absolutely necessary for a civilization/Civil Society. They are what separates us from the beasts.