Former Virginia elementary school teacher convicted on child porn charges

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – A Herndon man was convicted by a federal jury Thursday of receiving and possessing child pornography, following an investigation led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Child Exploitation Section in Washington, D.C., with assistance from Fairfax County Police Department.

Robert Fenn, 27, was a special education teacher at Poplar Tree Elementary School in Chantilly prior to his arrest on related state charges in June 2012.

Fenn was convicted of one count of receipt of child pornography, which carries a mandatory minimum penalty of five years and a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and one count of possession of child pornography, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Fenn was taken into custody following his conviction and will remain in custody pending his sentencing, which is scheduled for June 21.

In addition to teaching, Fenn also gave private music lessons to children in their homes. He admitted an interest in girls between the ages of nine and 14, which corresponded to the ages of the victims of child pornography depicted in images and videos found on his computers and external hard drives.

According to court records and evidence, Fenn was identified through an international initiative originating with Italian law enforcement that investigated a website offering access to child pornographic images and/or video files identified by the domain name "liberalmorality.com." The website was hosted in the United States and HSI obtained Internet records showing each Internet account that accessed the website and the specific images each account accessed.