Teacherput on leave amid porn investigation

Published 5:00 pm Tuesday, March 11, 2014

A veteran Eugene schoolteacher and longtime youth sports program coordinator was placed on administrative leave from his job last week, about one hour after police served a search warrant at his home as part of a child pornography investigation.

Bethel School District officials placed Shasta Middle School teacher Jody Allard on paid leave at 7:17 a.m. on March 4, district spokesman Pat McGillivray said Tuesday.

Sometime around 6 a.m. that same morning, state Department of Justice agents served a search warrant at the Sheldon neighborhood home that Allard, 42, shares with his twin brother and fellow youth sports coach, Jacky.

The Allards have not been arrested or charged with any crimes. But a DOJ investigator states in a sworn affidavit filed in Lane County Circuit Court that he has probable cause to believe that one or both of the brothers violated state child pornography laws.

Three pornographic images featuring young boys were uploaded to online photo-sharing networks from a computer whose Internet Protocol address is assigned to Jody Allard at his home on Tarpon Street, Special Agent Jim Williams states in the affidavit, which was written in support of a search warrant.

A law enforcement investigation is continuing, DOJ spokesman Michael Kron said Tuesday.

Jody Allard is in his 16th year of teaching math and physical education at Shasta, McGillivray said. He declined further comment because district officials are conducting a personnel investigation.

The Allard brothers have been heavily involved in local youth and high school sports — particularly baseball — for years. They currently own and operate Willamette Valley Sports Academy in Eugene.

A March 5 post on the academy’s Facebook page states that private workouts and team practices had been canceled because “We have something to take care of.”

“Nobody’s heard from them since,” parent Sonsharay Harrison said Tuesday. Youth teams from the academy will not play in a number of tournaments that had already been scheduled, she said.

“Nothing is going on now under their name,” Harrison said of the Allards’ academy. All content was removed from the academy’s website on Tuesday.

On the day of the police raid at his home, Jody Allard resigned his post as area president of the Sheldon Babe Ruth league, current league President Jade Starr said Tuesday. Allard had been a league official for at least a decade, Starr said.

Neighbors of the Allards said as many as one dozen marked and unmarked police cars went to the brothers’ home on the morning of March 4.

“They came in real quiet,” neighbor Marjorie Cassell said of the police.

Cassell and another neighbor said they haven’t seen the brothers since the day of the raid. The Register-Guard was unable to contact the Allards on Tuesday by telephone or at their house, where all window shades were drawn and no cars sat in the driveway.

Investigators on March 4 seized computers, hard drives and other computer equipment, smartphones, a camera and photo memory cards from the Allards’ home, according to an evidence receipt filed along with Williams’ affidavit.

Williams wrote in the affidavit that a Department of Justice investigation began in late December, after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children shared two tips they had received from the online photo sharing service Instagram regarding pornographic images depicting boys between the ages of approximately 10 and 15.

Investigators determined that the photos had been uploaded to Instagram from a computer whose Internet Protocol address was assigned to Jody Allard at his home, according to the affidavit.

Authorities on Feb. 25 received two additional tips reporting similar activity on IP addresses registered to Allard at his house, and found one digital image depicting child pornography, the affidavit states.

Thirty-two more images uploaded from an IP address assigned to Allard were found on Tumblr, an online social networking site. Most of them depicted boys between the ages of approximately 11 and 14 in their underwear, according to the affidavit.

Follow Jack on Twitter @JackMoranRG. Email jack.moran@registerguard.com.

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