‘Horrified by who I am’: Affidavit details texts that led to Wichita teacher’s arrest
A Wichita high school teacher facing criminal charges for allegedly possessing child pornography told the woman who reported him to police that he considers himself a “condemned hebephile,” admitted to viewing sexually explicit material of minors and said that he is sexually attracted to a 13-year-old girl, according to an affidavit released Monday by a Sedgwick County judge.
Hebephile is a term for adults who are sexually attracted to children who are generally between 11 and 14 years old.
According to the affidavit, in text messages the woman turned over to police, Shawn Wingfield described himself as “a misfit toy” who gets “excited about rearranging th(sic) understanding of reality on the part of young virgins.”
His public defender did not immediately return a message seeking comment Monday.
“I’m society’s enemy and worse I’m a teacher,” the affidavit says Wingfield wrote in the messages to his then-girlfriend.
“I’m a profile predator for national news.”
He also described himself in the text messages as “a danger to decent people” and expressed interest in defiling the 13-year-old girl, according to the affidavit, adding:
“I’m horrified by who I am.”
Wingfield also referred in the texts to the victim of a child pornography case.
“I’ve bared my soul as a condemned hebephile to you. Something that I have done to no other person,” the affidavit says he wrote.
Nicole Haralambidis, who briefly dated Wingfield, told The Eagle in an interview after his July 24 arrest that she turned him in because it was the right thing to do and so he “wouldn’t be in our schools again this fall.”
She told The Eagle that she received the alarming texts on Father’s Day and contacted Wichita police the next day, on June 21. Haralambidis also said she ended their relationship immediately after receiving Wingfield’s messages.
In a July 1 interview with police where she turned over her cellphone so authorities could see the messages, she said that Wingfield kept a laptop “specifically devoted to pornography” and was interested in role playing where someone acted “as a younger person,” according to the affidavit.
Police visited Wingfield’s home the next day. But what exactly transpired during that interaction is unknown because the portions of the affidavit that describe it are mostly redacted.
What is left unredacted, though, is that police told Wingfield that his electronic devices “would be processed and if nothing illegal was located on them, they could be returned to him,” the affidavit says.
After Wingfield signed a search waiver, a police detective picked up a laptop from Wingfield’s dining room table and noticed that Wingfield was running a program called CCleaner on it, and that the program was “approximately 96% complete,” the affidavit says.
CCleaner is a downloadable program used to remove files and erase browser history and cookies, according to its website.
The detective took a Dell laptop and Wingfield’s cellphone but left Wingfield’s work computer with him, the affidavit says.
At the time, Wingfield was still working as a high school teacher in the Wichita Public School District.
On July 6, the police detective leading the investigation received a forwarded email where Wingfield apologized to another school district employee for being “deceptive” and disclosed that he is sexually attracted to young pubescent children, the affidavit says.
A completed digital forensic examination of Wingfield’s Dell laptop found several embedded and deleted images of children who were naked or partially naked or engaged in sexual activity, according to the affidavit.
Authorities also found a more than 6-minute long video file in the laptop’s recycle bin that showed a girl undressing, as well as a list of recently accessed files that included 22 entries with file names suggesting they depicted child sex abuse, the affidavit says.
Wingfield was employed by the Wichita Public School District for nearly 24 years before his abrupt resignation on July 19. He taught gifted English and debate at Wichita Northwest High School, a district spokeswoman said previously.
Currently, Wingfield is charged with two counts of sexual exploitation of a child. His next court date is Aug. 12, the same day most Wichita students start the upcoming school year.
He remained in the Sedgwick County Jail on Monday in lieu of $50,000 bond.
