A high school track coach was arrested on child pornography charges less than a week after his teacher twin brother was arrested for the same offence.
Clinton Pappadakis, 47, a track coach at Oak Grove High School in San Jose, California, was charged with felony possession of child pornography.
The San Jose Police Department said their Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) / Child Exploitation Detail (CED) Task Force had been investigating Clinton since September 2017 when ‘suspicious activity involving him was reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).’
They executed a search warrant on February 20, and found child pornography on ‘multiple devices belonging to the suspect’.
He was arrested and booked in Santa Clara County Jail.
Clifford Pappadakis had been a track coach in the San Jose school district for 20 years
Clinton Pappadakis, 47, was reported taking photos of young girls with their backs to him
Courtesy of KRON4
Just a week earlier, on February 14, his twin brother turned himself in to an Jose police
Clifford Pappadakis, 47, was charged with ‘seven counts of Annoying and Molesting a Child and one count of Possession of Child Pornography,’ according to the Police Department.
Clifford is a gym teacher and track coach at Willow Grove Middle School in San Jose.
According to The San Jose Mercury News, the investigation started in September 2017, ‘when a parent noticed him taking photos of a ‘girl in a skimpy bikini’ during a team swim practice’.
The paper said that according to court documents, Pappadakis sometimes held swimming workouts for cross country runners, and ‘it was at one of those swim practices on September 7 that a parent became concerned that the coach was taking photographs of girls with their backs turned toward him and stretching by the pool.’
Police seized his computer and ‘located numerous inappropriate images in his possession’.
Both twins have been fired from their jobs.
Willow Glen Middle School in San Jose, where Clinton Pappadakis taught and coached for 11 years
East Side Union High School Superintendent Chris D. Funk said in a statement: ‘We are disappointed to learn of these allegations as we expect our employees to be professional and ethical in their interactions with students, other employees, and the community,’ the district said in a statement.
‘The district is cooperating fully with law enforcement as the judicial process moves forward.’
Investigations are ongoing about whether the twins were working together, but Officer Gina Tepoorten, of San Jose Police Department, told the SF Gate that the two cases were unrelated, and that one arrest did not lead to the next.
‘One was a tip that came through NCMEC [National Center for Missing and Exploited Children], and the other came from parents,’ Tepoorten said.
Each twin is expected back in court in March, separately.