Hardeeville High Teacher Arrested for MySpace Encounter
By Patrick Donohue, The Beaufort Gazette, S.C.
Jun. 13–A Hardeeville High School substitute teacher was arrested Thursday and charged with having sex with a 15-year-old boy he met on the Internet, according to the Beaufort Police Department.
Eric Lamar Parker, 25, of Port Royal, has been charged with committing a lewd act on a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, according to police.
Police say Parker met the teen on the popular social networking site MySpace. Investigators believe Parker lied about his age to set up a meeting between with the boy Monday.
Parker picked the boy up from his home and took him clothes shopping in Savannah before checking into a Beaufort motel, according to authorities.
Investigators arrested Parker on Thursday night at his home on Midtown Drive, and his computer was seized as evidence, police said.
Parker was being held at the Beaufort County Detention Center on $100,000 bail as of Friday.
Parker has been a substitute teacher at the school for at least a year, according to Jasper County School District officials.
“I don’t know whether you can suspend a substitute because they’re not full time,” said district spokesman Robert Huff, “but I’m certain we will not be using his services in the near future.”
In a statement released by Huff, school district superintendent Delacy Sanford said the district “regrets that one of its substitute teachers has been accused of such an act, but we must now await the completion of the investigation and any judicial proceedings.”
Over the past three years communities across the country have been critical of MySpace and similar social networking Web sites for their connections to numerous missing child, sexual assault and school threat cases.
The Beaufort County School District blocks students from accessing MySpace on school district computers.
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Copyright (c) 2008, The Beaufort Gazette, S.C.
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