A middle school teacher arrested last month on child pornography charges is no longer a public school employee in Needham, Massachusetts.
Michael Ciccolella, an Ashland man who was teaching at High Rock Middle School, is accused of uploading scores of videos depicting the sexual abuse of children as young as 3. He allegedly posed as a 13-year-old online, as well, prosecutors said.
Needham Public Schools said Wednesday that Ciccolella was no longer employed by the district.
Ciccolella was arrested March 6 on charges of possessing child pornography, distributing obscene material and distributing material depicting a nude child.
A teacher and soccer coach who allegedly posed as a 13-year-old online and distributed child sex abuse material appeared in court Friday.
A not guilty plea was entered on his behalf. Prosecutors had asked for bail of $100,000, and Ciccolella’s attorney $5,000, but Judge Michael Callahan set it at $500,000.
“Law enforcement has no reason to believe that any High Rock or Needham Public Schools students were involved or harmed in any way,” Superintendent Daniel Gutekanst said in a statement at the time.
Less than a month later, on April 4, Gutekanst announced another teacher in the district — Needham High School Band Director Spencer Parrish — had been arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.
Authorities have not seen any indication that Ciccolella’s and Parrish’s cases are related.
Resources for victims of sexual assault are available through the National Sexual Violence Resources Center and the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-4673, and Massachusetts provides this list of statewide and resources for sexual assault survivors.
In court, a prosecutor explained that the investigation into Ciccolella began with images uploaded to the messaging app Kik “that system that contained sexually explicit material including abuse of children,” depicting adults raping children, some in situations involving bondage, between the ages of about 3 and 12.
The device that uploaded the images, 168 videos, was traced to Ciccolella’s house in Ashland. The prosecutor noted that some of the videos have not previously been identified by investigators before, suggesting they “may have been homemade.” Ciccolella shook his head in apparent disbelief and disagreement.
The teacher also allegedly sent more than 5,000 messages on an app while posing as a 13-year-old who was interested in school, theater and soccer — prosecutors had noted that Ciccolella is also a soccer coach, and said he’d admitted to investigators that he’d posed as a teenager online.
In the cases of both Ciccolella and Parrish, Gutekanst said it was not believed any students “were involved or harmed in any way.”
Needham Public Schools said Wednesday that investigators are confident, based on searches of both teachers’ devices, that no students in the district were involved.
