A Georgia substitute teacher has been arrested after she allegedly filmed herself masturbating in front of her second-grade class.
Amelia Ressler, 30, allegedly recorded herself performing the sex act inside a classroom with 19 children present at the Zion Elementary School in Carroll County, Fox5 reported.
“It appears she was masturbating while the classroom was full of kids,” Carroll County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Ashley Hulsey told the outlet.
Detectives were alerted to Ressler after receiving a tip that the alleged sex video was circulating in the community.
“We obtained video evidence because she videoed it herself and disseminated it and we were able to get ahold of that evidence,” Hulsey said.
Hulsey added that it was possible the children saw what their teacher was doing.
“Where she was sitting, it wasn’t like it was a closed desk and [the kids] couldn’t look up and visually see what she was doing at the time,” she told CBS46.
Ressler was arrested Friday and booked into the Carroll Counry jail on 19 counts of child molestation.
Hulsey said the “mental anguish” suffered by affected children and parents had driven investigators to get the teacher “put in jail as quickly as possible.”
A mother named Nicole whose daughter was in the classroom at the time told Fox5: “My daughter had been bragging about the substitute, said they were having lots of fun, they played a lot of games.”
Nicole, who said she knew Ressler personally from her own school days, added: “She graduated about the same time we did, so it just seems worse.”