A Florida middle school teacher is facing deportation after authorities claim he was showing photos of his genitals to a 15-year-old student.
Jonathan Rowe, a 45-year-old math teacher and Jamaican national, was arrested Monday on charges of showing obscene material to a minor and unlawful use of a two-way device, both felonies, according to the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office.
The teen boy was in Rowe’s classroom at Explorer K-8 in Spring Hill, Florida, on May 13, during a planning period when he asked Rowe to show him a photo they had previously taken together in the classroom, according to police.
After Rowe grabbed his cell phone and began scrolling through his photos, “he would stop on photos of what the student believed was Rowe’s genitalia,” authorities said.
Rowe then allegedly instructed the student to take his cell phone to the bathroom to take pictures of his genitalia to then show Rowe, which the student refused to do.
When authorities later questioned Rowe, he confirmed he had pictures of his genitalia on his phone – but declined to answer whether he showed the pictures to the teen.
Rowe was arrested Monday at his Spring Hill home and transported to the Hernando County Detention Center, where he is being held on a $25,000 bond.
Rowe is a Jamaican citizen in the U.S. on a J-1 visa, which allows foreign nationals to come to the U.S. for educational or exchange programs. Under the visa, he had been employed as a teacher at the middle school since the start of the school year, authorities said.
Federal immigration officials have been notified of Rowe’s arrest “for the purposes of obtaining a detainer, which starts the deportation process,” the sheriff’s office noted.
No other victims have been identified as of Wednesday, though the police investigation remains ongoing.
