William Vahey
| William James Vahey | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | May 7, 1949 West Point, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 21, 2014 (aged 64) Luverne, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Suicide |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Schoolteacher |
| Criminal charge | Child molestation |
| Criminal penalty | 90 days in prison and five years' probation |
| Criminal status | Dead |
| Spouse(s) | Jean Vahey |
| Children | Dane Vahey, Drew Vahey |
William James Vahey (May 7, 1949 – March 21, 2014) was an American expatriate schoolteacher and child molester.
Vahey was born in 1949 at West Point, New York, to a decorated World War II pilot father. He graduated from college in 1972. In January 1973, he moved to Iran, where he taught at Tehran American School until 1973, after which he taught at other schools in Lebanon, Spain, Greece, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. From 1992 to 2002, he taught at Jakarta International School in Indonesia. In 2009, he began teaching history and geography at Southbank International School. He continued to work there until 2013.
In August 2013, he began teaching at the American Nicaraguan School in Managua and remained a teacher there until his death. He also coached basketball and led school trips to Bahrain, Turkey, Africa, Costa Rica, Nepal, Panama and Jordan. During this time, he kept homes in London and Hilton Head Island.
Vahey was arrested in 1969 at the age of 20 for child molestation, after which he told the police he began touching boys without their consent when he was 14, as a Boy Scout. After pleading guilty to one charge of lascivious behavior, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail and 5 years of probation, but was allowed to leave the country unsupervised and move to Iran after two years. He registered as a sex offender in January 1970 but failed to sign the sex offender registry, which, according to the BBC, was the reason his previous abuses went undetected by school officials.
In March 2014, he was confronted about obscene images of boys found on his flash drive by an administrator of his then-employer, the American Nicaraguan School. The flash drive in question had originally been stolen by a maid at the school, but it wasn't until she gave it to school director Gloria Doll that its contents became known. Doll found the flash drive contained sexually graphic images of at least 90 boys being molested by Vahey, catalogued by locations and dates corresponding to field trips Vahey went on beginning in 2008. After being confronted, Vahey confessed he had been molesting boys for his entire life, attributing this to him having himself been molested as a child. Some of his victims, according to the FBI, had been drugged and may therefore have no memory of their abuse; he would offer them Oreo cookies laced with sleeping pills.
...
Wikipedia