Ex-teacher gets 5 years in teen sexting
`I deeply regret what I did,' apology letter from defendant says
A former schoolteacher has been sentenced to federal prison for receiving explicit selfies from minors, crimes that were only discovered when the defendant's significant other was investigated for similar conduct.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston last month sentenced Charles Barrett of San Francisco to five years in prison and three years of supervised release. Barrett's sentencing came weeks after a different judge sentenced Marc Nuñez, Barrett's husband, to one year behind bars.
Prosecutors said in a sentencing memo that the crimes dated to 2013 and 2014, when Barrett allegedly encouraged teen boys to send him explicit images of themselves. Authorities say he received nine images from one boy who stated he was 16 and at least one image from another 16-yearold boy. Barrett also sent the second boy explicit images of himself, prosecutors said.
At the beginning of the prosecution, in 2022, prosecutors said one of the victims told police that Barrett traveled to the Fresno area to meet and sexually abuse him. Nuñez and Barrett's crimes were discovered after police converted another child pornographer into a confidential informant and got him to reveal the identities of others he knew to be interested in child porn, according to court records. Police say they identified 70 victims between the three men.
Barrett, a former music teacher at the Cathedral School for Boys and Alta Vista School, pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography. Nuñez, a kindergarten substitute teacher at the Cathedral School for Boys, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in late May.
Barrett has until late October to turn himself into the Bureau of Prisons and begin his sentence, court records show. He submitted an apology letter in which he said he committed his crimes while depressed after having ended an abusive relationship.
“It was during this dark period of my life that I engaged in the conduct at the center of this case,” Barrett wrote. “I never intended to cause any harm but ignorance is not a justification for my actions. I now know how my actions and choices were wrong, I deeply regret what I did and will never make the same mistake again.”