As the coronavirus pandemic has forced teachers and students to migrate to online learning via apps like Zoom and Google Meet, a Staten Island high school teacher was allegedly caught pleasuring himself during a video conference call, according to law enforcement.
The NYPD received a complaint about the teacher employed with the Tottenville High School in Staten Island following the Google Meet call on Monday.
The teacher, who has not yet been identified, allegedly appeared naked and started masturbating during the call. He is now under investigation, an NYPD spokesperson confirmed. It is not yet known whether there were any students on the call or if he intentionally exposed himself.
"This extremely disturbing alleged behavior has absolutely no place in our schools and was immediately reported to the NYPD," city Department of Education spokeswoman Danielle Filson said. "The teacher was immediately reassigned away from students pending the outcome of an investigation."
Jeffrey Toobin's Zoom Masturbation Incident
The news comes weeks after New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin was fired from the magazine after a similar incident during a Zoom video meeting with his colleagues.
As previously reported, Toobin, who worked as a writer for New Yorker for nearly three decades was fired following a weeks-long investigation into an incident that took place in October, in which he exposed himself and started masturbating during an election simulation meeting with magazine and WNYC radio staffers on Zoom in the run-up to the presidential election.
Participants on the call told Vice Media, who first reported the suspension, that during a break in the virtual meeting, Toobin switched to a second call that was the video-call equivalent of phone sex, lowered the camera, and started inappropriately touching himself on camera in full view of the call's participants.
Toobin later addressed the incident as an "embarrassingly stupid mistake" in a statement. "I believed I was not visible on Zoom," Toobin said at the time. "I thought no one on the Zoom call could see me. I thought I had muted the Zoom video."
Last week, a New Jersey school board member resigned after exposing her bare bottom during a board meeting that included students. Frances Cogelja, a trustee on the board of education in Hackensack, New Jersey, forgot to disable her camera before taking her laptop with her to the bathroom during the Zoom call, as previously reported.
