Days after a Wilmington private school administrator was charged with dealing in child pornography, a Milford School District custodian was arrested on the same charges.
Darin Albright, who once served as chief custodian at Mispillion Elementary School, according to a webpage that has since been deleted, was arrested Friday after admitting to sending and receiving photos on Twitter of children performing sexual acts, court documents say.
He’s being held at Sussex Correctional Institution on $180,000 cash bond.
According to the documents, the Delaware Child Predator Task Force was contacted on Thursday by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which had been contacted by Twitter.
The task force, created by former Attorney General Beau Biden, is made up of police and prosecutors and targets child predators.
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Twitter told the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that a site user who was later identified as Albright had contacted another Twitter user and told them he was “engaging in sexual contact” with a female child, the documents say.
Albright also sent three photos to various Twitter users depicting a girl 10 to 12 years old performing a sexual act on a man, an arrest warrant says.
After Twitter became aware of the photos, it sent a subpoena to Comcast to determine who the IP address belonged to. The address came back to Albright, the warrant says.
The following day, just before executing a search warrant on Albright’s home, Delaware State Police arrested the man.
In an interview with detectives, Albright admitted to creating the Twitter account – where he posed as a married woman – and said he had sent and received child and adult porn. Albright also told police he created the account three or four months ago.
While it remains unclear whether Albright has other Twitter accounts, Milford School District Superintendent Kevin Dickerson said the images Albright sent and received from the one account were “internet-sourced” and that none of the victims were district students.
Albright, he said, has been placed on leave “pending further employment action.” Dickerson added that the district is “aware of no risks to our students.”
“If true, this conduct is reprehensible,” Dickerson wrote. “While we are grateful there are no Milford victims, this is not a victimless crime, and our hearts go out to the depicted children.”
Dickerson did not say how long Albright had worked as a custodian, though a LinkedIn profile shows he has worked with the district since August 1993.
The LinkedIn profile also shows that Albright has been a member of the Memorial Volunteer Fire Company in Slaughter Beach for several decades.
No one from the fire company immediately responded to Delaware Online/The News Journal’s request for information about Albright’s affiliation with the fire company. Several posts on the department’s website show that at one point, Albright served as deputy chief.
Albright’s charges – three counts of dealing in child pornography – came just days after William Ushler, director of Upper School Admissions at Tower Hill School in Wilmington, was charged with five counts of dealing in child pornography.
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According to court documents obtained by Delaware Online/The News Journal last week, Ushler received the child sexual abuse material – a term preferred by activists to emphasize the exploitative nature of the explicit images and videos – from “unknown persons” in online chats.
He would then send the images to himself using a Yahoo email. This happened about 15 times between August 2018 and March 2022 when the account was suspended, records show.
Yahoo reported the emails to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which then contacted the Delaware Child Predator Task Force on April 14, an arrest warrant said.
Police said they found three images of exploited girls under 15 in Ushler’s email and another three stored on his iPhone. In an interview with police, Ushler admitted to possessing and sending the images to himself.
Following his arrest, Ushler was fired and banned from school grounds. He remains in prison on $250,000 cash bail.
This is a developing story. Return to delawareonline.com for updates.
Got a story tip or idea? Send to Isabel Hughes at ihughes@delawareonline.com. For all things breaking news, follow her on Twitter at @izzihughes_ Emily Lytle covers Sussex County from the inland towns to the beaches. Got a story she should tell? Contact her at elytle@delmarvanow.com or 302-332-0370. Follow her on Twitter at @emily3lytle.
