Ex-teacher gets prison term for child porn

For the second time in as many months, a Bek brother, this one a former West Seneca teacher, is going to federal prison on child pornography charges.

Timothy Michael Bek, the younger of two brothers convicted of child porn charges, was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison.

His brother Jason was sentenced last month to 12 years in prison.

“This is the face of evil,” U.S. Attorney William J. Hochul Jr. said of Timothy Bek after the sentencing. “This shows you why we, not just law enforcement but the community as well, have to be vigilant.”

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The sentencing ends a yearlong criminal case that started with allegations that the long-term substitute English teacher from West Seneca West High School was using a fake Facebook persona to persuade high school students to send him explicit pictures of themselves.

FBI agents accused Bek of identifying himself to potential victims as “Sarah Grayson,” an attractive teenage girl. They said the incidents occurred while he was working at West Seneca schools.

“The defendant abused his position of trust and violated the sacred trust of his students,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maura O’Donnell.

Bek had pleaded guilty to five counts of producing child pornography and a single count of possession of child porn. Federal prosecutors said more than 13,500 child porn images were found on his personal computer.

During sentencing, he offered a series of apologies, first to his victims and former students, then to his former colleagues at West Seneca West and finally to his friends and family, whom he feels he has shamed.

“That knowledge is worse than any prison cell, and I will never be free of it,” he told U.S. District Judge Richard J. Arcara.

Bek’s attorney acknowledged his client’s wrongdoing and suggested his client suffered from an addiction to child pornography.

“It appears there’s two different Timothy Beks,” defense lawyer Thomas P. Hurley said. “I believe there was a separation between who he was in the real world and who he was in the fantasy world.”

Bek, 25, was arrested last June, about five days after the FBI arrested his older brother in the West Seneca home they shared with their parents.

As part of a plea deal in December, Jason Bek, 30, admitted receiving child pornography and trying to entice a minor into a sexual encounter. The minor was actually an adult law enforcement official posing as an underage male.

Timothy Bek was a substitute teacher at West Seneca West from January through May of last year and had taught various grade levels and subjects in the district over the past couple of years.

He received his state teaching certification in English in 2009 and, according to West Seneca school officials, underwent a criminal background check as part of his hiring.

Source : buffalonews