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COLONIAL HEIGHTS, Virginia (LifeSiteNews) — Two former teachers in Virginia have been charged with more than 40 combined counts of child sex abuse after one was caught photographing a minor in a movie theater restroom.
WRIC reported that last month that police were called to Regal Cinemas in Colonial Heights, where 49-year-old Shaun Jason Adams (then a teacher at Elizabeth Davis Middle School) was arrested and charged with one count of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). A search of his home followed, and on August 22 Colonial Heights Police Department detectives announced that Adams would additionally be charged with 25 counts of felony manufacturing of CSAM and five felony counts of indecent liberties with a child.
The investigation also turned up a second suspect, 33-year-old Richard Franklin Troshak III (then a teacher at Chester Early Childhood Learning Academy), who was charged with eight counts of felony manufacturing of CSAM and two felony counts of indecent liberties with a child. The specifics of their alleged crimes were not detailed.
“This news is deeply disturbing and strikes at the heart of our responsibility to protect children,” Chesterfield County Public Schools Superintendent John Murray said in a statement. “I recognize the range of emotions and concerns this raises. The safety and well-being of our students is my highest priority.”
Murray informed the community that both teachers had been fired, that Chester Early Childhood Learning Academy’s principal and assistant principal had both been placed on leave, and that all employees at the school were being reviewed for potential signs of child abuse.
The protection of children is a recurring problem in Virginia schools. Two boys at Loudoun County’s Stonebridge High School were recently suspended not for harming or threatening other students but for objecting to the placement of a gender-dysphoric biological female in the boys’ lockers.
Loudoun County Public Schools highlighted the dangers of such situations years ago when superintendent Scott Ziegler set off a national firestorm for allegedly covering up the rape of a female student by a “transgender” classmate in a girls bathroom due to its damaging implications for the LGBT movement. He was convicted in 2023 of “using his official position to retaliate against someone for exercising their rights” by firing a teacher who testified about the situation before a grand jury.
