Bad Bad Teacher

(06/30/09 – Initial BadBadTeacher.com Report)

In March, Salvatore Graci, a former sixth-grade teacher at St. Bernadette of Lourdes School in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania pleaded guilty in federal court in Philadelphia to possessing child pornography.

As a result of that guilty plea, Graci faced a possible sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison, a fine of up to $250,000 and registration as a sex offender.

On June 29, 2009, Graci, 34, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel who told Graci he was giving him a “huge break”.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ewald Zittlau asked for a sentence at the top of the advisory sentencing-guideline range of 51 to 63 months in federal prison.

Defense attorney A. Charles Peruto Jr. said Graci was not the typical child pornography consumer nor a predator. Peruto said that Graci had a history of “striking out” with women and subscribed to the child-porn Web sites in order to find a “virgin” and to learn how to have sex.

A psychiatrist testified that Graci he had an “infantile view of sex” but was not a pedophile.

Graci told the court, “I was just looking for a virgin. I did not know that what I was doing was criminally wrong, and if I did I would certainly not have done so.”

Judge Stengel sentenced Salvatore Graci to one day in prison to by followed by 10 years of supervised release.

Graci is required to register as a sex offender and is prohibited contact with school-age children and will have his computer monitored by the probation office.

Reportedly, Graci taught at Presentation BVM Parish Elementary School in Wynnewood from 1997-1999, Waldron Mercy Academy in Merion Station from 1999-2000 and St. Bernadette’s in Drexel Hill from 2000-2003 and was working as an instructional technology support specialist in the Souderton Area School District until his resignation in November, 2007.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 9:45 am and is filed under Church Schools, Hall of Shame, ME-CP, Pennsylvania. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.