Riverside school counselor secretly recorded boys in the bathroom; parents were reluctant to sue
- Families of victims from the Seventh-day Adventist school settled a civil suit in 2023, but only a handful of families wanted to pursue civil litigation against the church.
A former Riverside private school counselor has admitted placing hidden cameras in campus bathrooms to capture young boys using the toilet and showers.
Matthew Daniel Johnson, 34, was a school counselor at La Sierra Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist private school in Riverside, from 2016 to 2020. Investigators arrested Johnson in March 2020 after authorities searched his home and office and found multiple child pornography videos.
The former counselor admitted to placing a pen-shaped recording device in a toilet paper holder in the school bathroom across from his office and using it to “capture the genitals of minor boys using the toilet,” according to his plea agreement. He had over 100 recordings of more than 60 boys as young as 5 years old, according to authorities.
On Wednesday, Johnson pleaded guilty to two charges of possession and production of child pornography.
A recovered video file showed Johnson adjusting the camera inside another bathroom at a junior high school Bible camp, where he worked as a chaperone.
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Families of the victims settled a civil negligence suit against the Southeastern Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and La Sierra Academy for an undisclosed amount in 2023, the plaintiff’s attorney, Bobby Thompson, told The Times. Although there were more victims, he said, only a handful of families were willing to pursue civil litigation against the church.
After Johnson was released on bail in 2021, charges against him were not filed with the state due to a pandemic-related oversight, Texas television station KBTX reported. During this period, he moved to Texas.
Johnson, who has a wife and daughter, said during an arraignment in Houston that he moved due to widespread news coverage of the case and his wife’s new job at a Texas university. In March 2023, a new agent assigned to the case noticed the oversight, and Johnson was indicted and arrested again in Bryan, Texas.
Family and friends sent letters to the federal judge in early October, asking for leniency in his sentencing, which is scheduled for February. Johnson faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison, and up to a maximum of 50 years in federal prison.
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