EVERETT — A former teacher at Archbishop Murphy High School pleaded not guilty to charges of possessing sexual depictions of minors Monday in King County Superior Court.
King County prosecutors charged John Doty, 32, of Seattle, on Feb. 24. School officials fired him after his Feb. 20 arrest.
Doty admitted to detectives during earlier questioning by police that he used an online peer-to-peer sharing program to download child pornography and had been using such programs since he was 10 years old, according to court records.
“He said … it was the feeling of ‘oops, I did a crime,’” King County detective Chris Knudsen wrote in charging papers.
At the request of prosecutors, Superior Court Judge Brian McDonald set Doty’s bail at $250,000 during his arraignment on Monday. The judge also granted a request barring Doty from any contact with minors and requiring monitoring software on all of his electronic devices.
“The defendant has no known criminal history but is a high school teacher who has now admitted to law enforcement he knowing collected this material and enjoyed the thrill of the crime each time,” Knudsen wrote.
Knudsen, using an online investigation tool, uncovered multiple illegal clips depicting rape and sexual exploitation of minors on Doty’s computer, according to the probable cause statement. The footage includes children of various ages, with Knudsen estimating the girls to be between infancy and 15 years old.
“He said that the content he watches generally isn’t with kids, but when the child porn files pop up he finds the content ‘interesting,’ although he also said that he finds it disgusting,” Knudsen wrote in charging papers.
After police arrested Doty on Feb. 20, Archbishop Murphy High School, a private Catholic school, released a public statement.
“The King County Sheriff’s Department notified us on Thursday that Mr. John Doty was arrested,” wrote Jana James, an Archbishop Murphy High School spokesperson, in an email. “He was immediately placed on administrative leave and then subsequently terminated … based on the information we have been provided by law enforcement, the arrest is for misconduct unrelated to his employment.”
The school screens all employees through a background check, James added.
A pretrial hearing is set for Doty on March 25. His trial is scheduled for April 22.
Aspen Anderson: 425-339-3192; aspen.anderson@heraldnet.com; X: @aspenwanderson.
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