‘Disgusting:’ KIRO hosts note role of tech in child sex crime cases against school workers

News broke this week that two school administrators and a teacher in Western Washington were arrested on suspicion of committing child sex crimes.

The Redmond Police Department announced it arrested a 61-year-old teacher Tuesday after they said detectives, posing as children during a sting operation, communicated with him online.

Investigators said the Northshore School District teacher planned to meet up with children at a hotel in Redmond for illicit purposes. When he showed up, officers put him in handcuffs and booked him into the King County jail, according to KIRO 7.

In Snohomish County, an assistant principal has been on administrative leave for the last three months after being arrested on suspicion of child rape. Lake Stevens Police arrested the 37-year-old in November.

A school district spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Herald in Everett this week that the administrator was on leave from Centennial Middle School, adding that the district took immediate action as soon as they became aware of the allegations.

In addition, 29-year-old Alex Díaz Rios was one of seven men arrested as part of an operation run by the Renton Police Department. Díaz Rios was the assistant principal at The Option Program at Seward (TOPS) K-8 in Seattle’s Eastlake neighborhood.

Police said Díaz Rios communicated extensively with an undercover detective he thought was a 15-year-old boy and agreed to meet at a hotel to pay for sex. But the night they were supposed to meet, Díaz Rios didn’t show up. He was arrested and charged with a gross misdemeanor. He has since resigned from his position at the Seattle school.

More on these cases: King County expert urges parents to talk to children amid administrator abuse allegations

‘Disgusting:’ Gee and Ursula respond to the latest developments

Ursula Reutin and Gee Scott, hosts of KIRO Newsradio’s “The Gee and Ursula Show,” attacked the news of these cases in the opening segment of their show Thursday morning.

Gee said these stories don’t shock him as they have been happening for a long time and, many times, it’s the people who are supposed to be trusted are the ones who violate the trust of young people and their families.

“When you hear stories like this, there’s some of us that might say, ‘Oh my goodness, this is shocking to hear.’ But then there’s some of us, including myself, that say things like, ‘This has been happening for years,'” Gee said. “And what I mean by that, what’s been happening for years, there always seems to be individuals (who) engage in these nasty predatory practices. They’re usually in trusted positions, positions of authority, and that’s been since the beginning of time.”

However, Gee also thinks it’s different in this day and age than it used to be since people being online so much has outed people in these trusted positions.

“The difference now is, obviously, in this case, technology was the reason why people got caught,” Gee said. “I am glad that society is cleaning up these people that exist in these positions of authority. Again, I know growing up, it was ‘Stranger danger.’  That’s what we said, things like that, only to find out that most of the time it’s not the stranger. It’s people, either within your family, people that are teachers or loved ones or in the church, all kinds of places …”

“Access to kids is the common factor,” Ursula responded. “They have easy access to children. It’s disgusting, first of all, and I get that they deserve their day in court, but … it’s an awful reality.”

Ursula then asked the question about how people are supposed to talk to their kids about this.

“I would state it as bluntly as possible that even though these are people in positions that you should trust, you cannot trust anyone,” Ursula said. “And if someone makes you feel uncomfortable, touches you in an unusual way, you need to speak up and say something.”

Gee’s next point on the topic related to what he said previously: When it comes to the disclosure of abuse, it’s different today than it was in previous years as there aren’t as many “family secrets.”

“As a family and people today, I think that we are talking about it way better today than we ever have …” Gee said. “It’s actually being talked about, and people are actually being held. People, it doesn’t matter if they’re a public figure because there are so many people in the past that got away with it.”

Head here or tap on the player below to listen to the entire conversation on “The Gee and Ursula Show.”

Jake and Spike: People have more opportunities to be weird now

After going through the facts of the cases during their opening segment Thursday afternoon, Jake Skorheim and Spike O’Neill, hosts of KIRO Newsradio’s “The Jake and Spike Show,” shared their opinions about the cases, including how frightening this is for parents.

“As a parent, this is the scariest thing because you send your kid to school with the confidence and the hope, the trust that they’re in a safe environment, that they’re supported and they’re not being associated with potential predators,” Jake, a father of several kids in school, said.

The hosts went on to discuss the role of technology in cases like this, but they addressed it differently than Gee and Ursula, instead looking at it from the perspective of the alleged perpetrators.

“Now at some point (Rios) decided, ‘I’m going to go online and I’m going to start researching this stuff, and I’m going to start investigating this’ to the point where actually going to communicate with this kid. If you don’t have that, if you didn’t have access to all that, maybe that’s a sick passing thought that flies through his head and he puts it away,” Jake said. “But access to the internet just makes this stuff available to him, and then he finds communities of like-minded weirdos out there.”

“(The internet) supports and nurtures these dark thoughts that used to be, hopefully just passing horrific thoughts,” Spike responded in agreement.

When it comes to whether people are behaving differently now than decades ago, before the rise of the internet, both hosts think that’s the case.

“I think people have the opportunity to be more weird today than they did 50 years ago,” Jake said.

“There’s something weird for everybody out there,” Spike said a short time later. “And when people got a weird thought, they find other people are in that same weird stuff.”

“And the problem is, like you just said, they get emboldened by this community of weirdos,” Jake responded.

Jake circled back to how these cases impact schools and how he thinks they need to be doing more to identify people like this before they begin working with young students.

“The schools have a real issue on their hands,” Jake said. “They need to figure out some way to screen against this.”

Head here or tap on the player below to listen to Jake and Spike’s comments about the cases.

Contributing: Charlie Harger and James Lynch, KIRO Newsradio; Bill Kaczaraba, MyNorthwest

Steve Coogan is the lead editor of MyNorthwest. You can read more of his stories here. Follow Steve on X, or email him here.