This undated photo provided by the Walgren family shows 16-year-old Corey Walgren, who committed suicide on January 11 after being confronted about a sex video
A teenager from Illinois who killed himself after being accused by officials at his school of being in possession of child pornography had played an audio recording for his friends in which he could be heard having consensual sex with a female classmate.
Corey Walgren, a 16-year-old honor roll student at a suburban Chicago high school, jumped to his death from a five-story parking deck on January 11, just hours after he was called into the dean’s office at Naperville North High School and confronted about the video he had made of himself having a sexual encounter with a female classmate.
Corey’s parents, Maureen and Doug Walgren, have sued the school, accusing it in a federal lawsuit of unnecessarily traumatizing their son by warning him he could be criminally charged and forced to register as a sex offender. They are seeking more than $5million in damages.
‘They scared the hell out of the kid, and that’s what drove Corey to kill himself,’ said the family’s attorney, Terry Ekl.
In police reports, court filings, witness accounts, emails and other documents obtained by the Associated Press, officials at the 2,800-student school in an upper middle-class suburb west of Chicago say they conveyed to Walgren the seriousness of the matter while also reassuring him that their goal was to keep it out of court.
Walgren was brought into the dean’s office at Naperville North High School in Illinois (pictured) and questioned about a recording he had made of himself having a consensual sexual encounter with a female classmate
The case began unfolding at around noon on January 11 after the 16-year-old girl with whom Walgren had sex went to school officials to make a complaint about him.
Earlier that day, she had learned of the sex video from a friend and was upset Walgren recorded their encounter without her permission. At first, she said, she was not sure the sex was consensual but later stated clearly that it was.
The Walgrens never blamed the girl and said she was right to report the video, Ekl said. She later attended Corey’s wake.
Facing discipline at school was a new experience for Walgren. As he walked into the office at about 12.40pm, Dean Steve Madden said he had never seen Walgren under these circumstances because the teen had never been in trouble, according to the documents.
Walgren, the eldest of three children, was a straight-A student and played hockey as part of the Naperville North Huskies Hockey Club.
According to his obituary, the 16-year-old also loved fishing and was a member of the Naperville North Bass Fishing Club.
Walgren quickly admitted what he had done. When he and the girl were in his car, parked on a secluded street at night, he had turned on the video-recording function and dropped his cellphone by his leg after the pair talked and shared some alcohol.
Student-athlete: Walgren, the eldest of three children, was a straight-A student and played hockey as part of the Naperville North Huskies Hockey Club
Neither teen was visible on the two minutes of footage during their sexual tryst. It was the audio Walgren played for four friends, some at a school hockey practice. He never texted or emailed it.
Also in the dean’s office was Brett Heun, a Naperville police officer assigned to the school.
The recording was hidden on an app that looked like a calculator. When Walgren opened it for the officer, it revealed photos of other partially nude girls, as well as the video, according to accounts obtained by the AP as early as last spring.
Those images, which Walgren said were sent to him by others, were among contents downloaded by Naperville police.
The officer told Walgren the video ‘concerned child pornography, which is obviously illegal,’ Walgren nodded.
Heun later said he wanted to impress upon Walgren that the matter was serious. But if Walgren cooperated, Heun told him, the matter could be kept out of court.
Walgren was interviewed for at least 20 minutes in the dean’s office until his parents were contacted.
When officials called his mother at work, Maureen Walgren said she could guarantee her son would fulfill any requirements to keep the matter out of court, according to the accounts obtained by the AP.
She also asked if the family should get an attorney. School officials told her that was her decision.
Corey’s parents, Maureen and Doug Walgren (pictured), have sued the school for $5million, accusing it in a federal lawsuit of unnecessarily traumatizing their son by warning him he could be criminally charged and forced to register as a sex offender
Madden asked Walgren if he understood what he did was wrong. ‘He said … he knew he made a mistake,’ the dean said in documents.
Walgren did not appear upset by the questioning. ‘Corey was calm, cooperative and respectful,’ Madden said. The dean also thanked him for being honest.
Walgren may not have shown it, but what he heard must have caused him ‘psychological distress … humiliation and shame’, his parents’ lawsuit says.
After meeting school officials, Walgren was told to wait at a student-services office while his mother drove to the school. He sat behind a secretary, and the two chatted casually.
When she looked back minutes later, he was gone.
Surveillance footage later showed him walking up a multi-story municipal parking garage less than a mile away from school. At the top, he paced for several minutes.
A woman heading to her car glanced up to see someone sitting five floors above. She wasn’t alarmed, a police report said, because the person ‘was calmly sitting on the ledge’.
But a minute later, at 2.40pm, she looked out a third-deck window. The same person was now lying on the ground level. She ran down the stairwell and began performing CPR before an ambulance arrived.
His mother was at the school after 3pm when she was told that a person who was injured downtown might be her son.
As Heun drove her to a hospital, Maureen Walgren, a nurse and married mother-of-three, asked about photos of the injured person sent to Heun’s phone. The picture quality was poor, he answered. But she insisted and he handed her his phone. She knew instantly it was her son.
She did not see him until after doctors pronounced him dead at 3.27pm.
Less than three hours had passed since her son was summoned to the dean’s office.
When sexual images are shared and discovered, school officials are not in complete agreement about best practices for responding, but there is consensus that a student’s cellphone should immediately be confiscated and police alerted.
Guidelines from the Illinois Association of School Boards say not reporting explicit images of kids can itself be a crime.
The family’s attorney contends a recording with no visible images of sex acts cannot qualify as child pornography. Some legal experts disagree.
Either way, critics say, child pornography laws should not be invoked to prosecute kids who share sexual images with other kids.
When those laws were passed, lawmakers could not have foreseen how teens, perhaps acting on impulse or under peer pressure, would be able to create or send explicit images at the push of a button.
The laws were aimed at protecting children from adults. Critics say it’s a misapplication to use them to prosecute children.
Though the issue can be politically sensitive, at least 20 states have revised their laws to provide alternatives to child porn charges. A 2015 Illinois law aimed at sexting – when images are sent via text or other electronic means – lets courts sentence minors to supervision and community service.
Law enforcement retains discretion about how to handle such matters. In Walgren’s case, the fact the sex was consensual and that he did not distribute the recording would have counted in his favor.
In July, an internal affairs investigation cleared Officer Heun of any wrongdoing in connection to Walgren’s suicide, concluding that he followed proper protocol while questioning him
The City of Naperville backed the police department’s version of events, saying in a statement that the case, which did not involve police custody, was ‘handled properly.’
The law has long recognized school officials as stand-in parents during the school day, with the power to investigate reports of wrongdoing and to discipline students without consulting parents.
But the Walgrens’ lawsuit accuses the school of violating Walgren’s rights by not calling his parents first. The school board association instructs schools to call parents but does not say if that should be the first step.
Walgren walked out of the dean’s office, made his way to a parking deck a mile away and ended his life by jumping from the fifth-story ramp. His mother was on her way to the school at the time, and saw her son’s body in a grainy photo shown to her by an official
The custody issue is central to the civil case. Students must be told they have a right to remain silent only if they are in custody. Walgren was never told he was under arrest, but his parents’ lawsuit argues he was in custody for all practical purposes, including because he had been told not to leave.
In January emails about Walgren obtained by the AP through an open-records request, Naperville Deputy Police Chief Jason Arres and a prosecutor discussed the issue.
They cite a 2012 Illinois appeals court decision that said being in custody does not necessarily mean a formal arrest but may come down to whether a child at school ‘felt he or she was not at liberty to terminate the interrogation or leave.’
However, an internal police report prepared later by Arres concluded that Heun handled the matter correctly and that Walgren had not been in custody because, among other reasons, the dean had initiated the questioning and because Heun made it clear he ‘had no intention of bringing criminal charges.’
In general, courts have not found schools liable for student suicides that happen off campus.
A federal court in Florida in 2012 tossed a lawsuit filed by parents of 13-year-old Hope Witsell. They said her school could have prevented her from hanging herself at home after taunts over a revealing photo texted to a boy.
The court said schools have no duty to ‘insure against the grim but persistent prospect of a student’s suicide.’
If anyone is seeking help please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 1 800 273 8255 or visiting the website.