BOTHELL — A former Northshore School District substitute teacher was recently sentenced for possession of child pornography under nearly identical circumstances to his previous sentencing in 2015.
Kurtis Kasner, 76, was arrested in April for possession of child pornography and sentenced to six months in prison and a year in community custody July 9, according to court documents. The sentencing comes only three years after he was convicted for the same charges.
The sex offender was a substitute teacher from 2000 to 2014 for the NSD, covering schools in Bothell, Kenmore, Woodinville and parts of unincorporated King County. He stated at the time of his first arrest that he primarily taught third- through sixth-grade children in music, physical education or in the library during his time with the NSD and had previously taught in California for 30 years before moving to Washington.
Police arrested Kasner at his home in Woodinville in 2014 after a computer technician found images of minors engaging in sexual acts on an Apple iMac Kasner had brought in for repairs. Police reports from 2014 said he admitted to searching for “incest” online to obtain photographs of 10- to 15-year-old children.
The judge sentenced him to 12 months in prison, 24 to 36 months in community custody after his jail time and requiring him register as a Level I sex offender wherever he lives. Kasner violated his community custody and was arrested in Vancouver, Washington, in April after a computer technician in California discovered child pornography on a hard drive Kasner had mailed in for repairs.
“I have always been fascinated by images of children,” Kasner told police in 2014. “(It’s a) victimless crime because there were no real people involved and it was just in my head.”
After his arrest in 2014, Kasner further admitted to molesting two boys, a 15-year-old in 1976 when he served as a Big Brother in California, but the incident was never reported, and another molestation in the late 1970s.
Authorities found nearly 20,000 images of child pornography on Kasner’s hard drive after his arrest in April 2018, according to court documents in a Columbian report. The reports said investigators also found that Kasner had presumably taken a childhood photo and put his own face and a relative’s face on some images.
