Juvenile Probation Camp teacher busted

Teacher faces child porn charges

By Greg Moran
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
6:10 p.m. January 14, 2008

A teacher at a county juvenile probation camp school was charged with possessing child pornography by federal prosecutors Monday.
Edgardo Vilas, 42, declined to enter a plea at a court hearing, and he remained in custody.

Vilas faces a maximum of 10 years if he is found guilty. The Descanso man is a teacher at the juvenile school at Rancho del Campo, a county-run detention camp for juvenile offenders in Campo.

An affidavit submitted by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the court file said the arrest of Vilas stemmed from a long-running probe of a large Internet-based child pornography enterprise that operates more than 200 child exploitation Web sites.

In November agents learned that the user of an e-mail address later found to belong to Vilas had paid money to subscribe to one of the Web sites that allows subscribers to access and download pornographic images.

On Friday agents searched his Descanso home and found CD and DVDs with images of child pornography. Vilas admitted to agents that he downloaded the images from his computer.

“Vilas also admitted to purchasing child pornography consistently over the past 10 years,” wrote Special Agent Cara Chace in the affidavit.

A spokesman for the county Probation Department confirmed Vilas was a teacher at the school, and said that he did not report to work Friday.

Derryl Acosta, the spokesman, said that Vilas will not be allowed back in the classroom until the case is resolved.

In the affidavit, Chace said that Vilas denied to agents that he had sexually molested any of his students.

Because in Vilas eyes, the sex was consentual. Give it time and the children who were in his charge will come forward. He picked the perfect place to work. A probation camp where he could make a childs life a living hell if they did not comply with his advances.