A Tower Hill School administrator is charged with five counts of dealing in child pornography.
53-year-old William Ushler was arrested Tuesday, and is currently in custody at the Young Correctional Center on $250,000 cash bail.
Authorities executed search warrants at his Wilmington home and Tower Hill School, where he’s the director of Upper School admissions.
The warrants were based on a tip to Delaware Child Predator Task Force from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children which received a report from Yahoo! Inc. that one of its email users had possibly transmitted child pornography.
The report identified an email sent in March showing an underage nude female and another sent in August 2019 of an inappropriate image of a young teenage girl.
After hearing his Miranda rights, Ushler admitted in an interview he had the email address used and had online chats with unknown people receiving nude images he would send to himself. He also admitted the nude images included underage females.
Authorities also found three more nude female children about 13-14 years of age on his iPhone.
The Wilmington News Journal reports Ushler has been fired and barred from Tower Hill’s campus,
Ushler’s case comes nearly a decade after former Tower Hill Headmaster Chris Wheeler was convicted of 25 counts of dealing in child pornography and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
That conviction was later overturned by the state Supreme Court, after Wheeler appealed, arguing possible witness tampering as a pretext to obtain warrants in the case violated his constitutional protections from unreasonable searches and seizures.
The Department of Justice and Delaware State Police asking anyone who may have been a victim or has information about Ushler’s case to contact the Child Predator Task Force.
