Charles Mark McCormack, 54, pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of children Nov. 27. He taught kindergarten at Chattanooga Valley Elementary School from 2002-16.
A former Chattanooga Valley Elementary School kindergarten teacher will go to prison for 10 years on a child pornography conviction.
A U.S. District Court judge sentenced Charles Mark McCormack, 54, to a decade in prison this week, followed by three years of supervised release. McCormack, who taught at Chattanooga Valley Elementary from 2002-2016, pleaded guilty on Nov. 27 to one count of production of child pornography.
According to a complaint from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, McCormack hid a video camera under his bathroom sink in Muscle Shoals, Ala., in 1997 or 1998. After walking off screen, viewers can hear McCormack call to somebody. Then, a girl walks into the bathroom and urinates. She was about 6 years old.
In October 1998, McCormack met his girlfriend in a Memphis hotel room. His videotape fell out of a briefcase. The woman said McCormack panicked. Curious, the woman took the tape. She said she later called the Muscle Shoals, Ala., police department to report a crime, but an investigator wanted her to drive to the station.
She didn't want to drive that far, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by the U.S. Attorney's Office. Instead, she put the video in a family lock box. She gave it to an investigator in September 2016, after reading that McCormack had been the subject of other child abuse investigations.
According to sentencing memos filed by the prosecution and McCormack's defense attorney, he faced 10-20 years in prison. The two sides agreed that a sentence on the low end of that threshold was appropriate.
In part, U.S. Attorney William Grady wrote that McCormack should be sentenced on the low end because it is consistent with what other defendants have received for similar offenses. Also, he wrote that McCormack showed a "clear and timely acceptance of responsibility."
McCormack's attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Allison Case, wrote, "There is no evidence that Mr. McCormack distributed the tape, showed it to others or sought to distribute it. And finally, Mr. McCormack maintains that he has never touched a child inappropriately."
Before this investigation, two female Chattanooga Valley Elementary students accused McCormack of making sexual advances on them. In 2010, a third-grader told her mother that McCormack called her to his desk. She said she saw the flash of his flip phone, snapping a picture under her skirt. Later, McCormack denied taking a picture and gave the girl's mother his phone, showing that he didn't have a picture on it.
The Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit district attorney's office decided not to prosecute the case, citing a lack of evidence.
In January 2015, a kindergarten girl told her mother that McCormack called her to his desk and fondled her. McCormack denied the allegations, and the sheriff's office did not file a criminal charge, again citing lack of evidence.
In the spring of 2016, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office's sentencing memorandum, local police arrested an unnamed person on a child exploitation charge. The memo does not name that defendant, however, it states that police then found out the defendant and McCormack were exchanging messages.
McCormack pretended to be a teenage girl. He sent the defendant a sexually explicit picture of a girl. He also sent her a picture of two topless girls taking a picture of themselves in a bathroom mirror. When investigators searched McCormack's home in Flintstone, according to the memo, they found about 20 pictures of naked girls. They believed the girls were underage, but they did not have firm proof.
McCormack then retired from the school system. He told investigators he was not attracted to underage girls and had never touched an underage girl inappropriately. A couple of months after the raid, his former girlfriend emerged with the video from his bathroom.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.