JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A former Jacksonville teacher is charged with possessing a computer disk drive containing videos depicting the sexual abuse of children, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida said Monday.
Michael Paul Gillis, 64, was arrested Wednesday at his home by FBI agents, federal prosecutors said.
According to court documents and information provided in open court, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Gillis’s residence and seized a computer hard disk drive that was inside a desktop computer belonging to Gillis. A forensic review of this disk drive revealed that it contained videos depicting children being sexually abused, according to prosecutors.
A criminal complaint shows Gillis admitted to federal agents that he had been downloading and viewing child sex abuse images from the dark web for more than a decade. The complaint states Gillis has used both his desktop computer and his laptop to download the images.
According to the complaint, the explicit images came from a file-sharing network that mainly included images and videos of young teenagers but also explicit material of children as young as 3-years old. The complaint shows this included videos of minors being sexually abused by adults.
Investigators said Gillis was cooperative, gave them the password to his computers and confirmed to agents that he had hundreds of child abuse files that were clearly labeled.
According to the complaint, Gillis was viewing the images while employed as a teacher. Agents said Gillis told them that he fantasized about touching a child but never acted on it.
In the complaint, Gillis is quoted by investigators as saying, “I know I shouldn’t do it.”
“He wanted to come clean. He obviously wanted something like that to happen. Either get caught or have a life-changing event to make him realize he needed help,” News4JAX crime and safety expert Ken Jefferson said of the details in the report.
If convicted, Gills could face up to 20 years in federal prison.
Duval County Public Schools told News4JAX that Gillis was a teacher between August 1991 and August 2007. News4JAX is still waiting on his personnel file to find out what grade he taught in and what school he was assigned to.