A former counselor at a Riverside private school admitted to placing hidden cameras in campus restrooms to capture young boys using the restrooms and showers.
Matthew Daniel Johnson, 34, was a school counselor at La Sierra Academy, a private Seventh-day Adventist school in Riverside, from 2016 to 2020. Investigators arrested Johnson in March 2020 after authorities searched his home and office and found several child pornography videos.
The former counselor admitted to placing a pen-shaped recording device in a toilet paper holder in the school restroom across from his office and using it to “capture the genitals of underage boys using the toilet,” according to his plea agreement. Authorities say he had more than 100 recordings of more than 60 boys as young as 5 years old.
On Wednesday, Johnson pleaded guilty to two counts of possession and production of child pornography.
A recovered video file showed Johnson adjusting the camera in another bathroom at a middle school Bible camp, where he worked as a chaperone.
The victims’ families settled a civil negligence lawsuit against the Southeast Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and La Sierra Academy for an undisclosed amount in 2023, the plaintiff’s attorney, Bobby Thompson, told the Times. Although there were more victims, he said, only a handful of families were willing to take civil action against the Church.
After Johnson was released on bail in 2021, charges against him were not filed with the state due to a pandemic-related oversight, Texas television station KBTX reported. During this period, he settled in Texas.
Johnson, who has a wife and daughter, said at an arraignment in Houston that he moved because of widespread media coverage of the case and his wife’s new job at a Texas university. In March 2023, a new agent on the case noticed the oversight and Johnson was charged again and arrested in Bryan, Texas.
Family and friends sent letters to the federal judge in early October, asking for leniency in his sentencing, which is scheduled for February. Johnson faces a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and up to a maximum of 50 years in federal prison.
