A former dance teacher at Orange County High School of the Arts–our very own Glee campus in Santa Ana–has been acquitted on charges he'd been sexting a 15-year-old female student, his defense attorney reportedly said.
John Juul Nielson was fired by OCHSA on Jan. 13, 2012, a little over a month before the 54-year-old Cerritos resident was arrested by Santa Ana Police.
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Ed Flores, Nielson's attorney, reportedly made the acquittal disclosure to City News Service, which characterized Nielson as being emotional upon learning of the ruling. His attorney is quoted as saying the former teacher's wife and three daughters have suffered since the allegations, so you could imagine the gears turning for a wrongful termination complaint.
Or it could be the Nielson family is simply relieved their patriarch has been spared up to a year in jail, the maximum penalty the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) had said he faced if convicted of misdemeanor child annoyance.
John Juul Nielson, OC High School of the Arts Dance Teacher, Accused of Sexting Student
Nielson was accused of grooming the girl between Oct. 15, 2011, through Jan. 11, 2012, through sexual
text messages that revealed details about his personal life and
past and current relationships. The OCDA had alleged the pair exchanged “multiple
sexually
inappropriate conversations, including asking her for an 'exclusive'
dating relationship.”
Flores countered these were
friendly messages between a teacher and student without the sexually suggestive themes claimed by cops and prosecutors, City News Service reports.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.