Jacob De La Paz took the stand Tuesday afternoon in his federal child sex exploitation trial.
De La Paz didn't deny sending a sexually explicit video of himself to a teenage high schooler while he was her math tutor, and he didn't deny that he recorded a video asking her to do the same for him - but he said it was all her idea.
De La Paz was a coach at St. Thomas More High School when the videos came to light last spring; the alleged victim was a 17-year-old high school senior at his old school, North Vermilion High.
He faces a mandatory minimum of 20 years in prison if he's convicted of the charges filed against him, attempted production of child pornography and attempted receipt of child pornography.
A 14-juror panel was selected on Monday; testimony began Tuesday and the trial is expected to wrap up tomorrow.
De La Paz was fired from STM back in April 2023 after the video of him asking the girl for a sexually explicit video began circulated online.
As KATC Investigates reported, Delapaz had previouslybeen disciplined in Arkansas for inappropriate text messages to a student. Despite that, he was hired in Vermilion Parish, and later by St. Thomas More High School. He's been sitting in jail since he was indicted in May 2023. To read more about the case, click here and here.
Before De La Paz took the stand, his attorney called the victim's boyfriend to the stand. The boyfriend, who said they'd been dating since high school, testified that he was upset in the spring of 2023 because he felt she was talking about De La Paz too much.
When he found out about the videos, he set up a fake Facebook profile and threatened De La Paz with exposure if he didn't pay some money. But by that time, the boyfriend testified, the video of De La Paz asking the girl to make a sexually explicit video for him already was making the rounds on social media.
"She didn't know anything about the extortion," the boyfriend testified. "She didn't know. That was all my own doing... I wanted him to be exposed for who he was. I wanted it to be done. All of it."
He testified that the victim was overwhelmed by the video being made public, and texted him "I'm loosing myself" on the day she went to talk to law enforcement about it. After the boyfriend completed his testimony, De La Paz himself took the stand.
He testified that he taught math at North Vermilion High School for five years, then left to take a job at St. Thomas More. At both schools, he was a math teacher and a cross-country track coach, he testified.
He taught the victim at NVHS when she was a junior, and she was still a student there when he started at STM in Fall 2023, De La Paz testified. She reached out to him via Facebook Messenger asking about function concepts, because she was struggling with that, he said.
Then later that fall, she turned their conversations toward more personal things like where he was going and who he was with, De La Paz said. He testified that at the time his girlfriend was a North Vermilion High School teacher.
Around Christmas, De La Paz said, the girl asked him to meet her at the mall. He said no, but she said she was 18 and wasn't his student and so he couldn't get in trouble - but he told her it didn't matter, she was still a student.
De La Paz testified that in January she started asking sexual questions and expressing her disappointment in "my lack of sexual adventure." The girl, who was still 17 years old, said she'd made a sexually explicit video of herself, he said.
"She offered to show it to me. I said OK," De La Paz testified.
He said she told him he had to ask for it - and sent him a script that he used to create the video in which he asks her to make him a sexually explicit video. The girl promised to delete it, he testified. After he sent it to her, she sent the requested sexually explicit video of herself. Then, he testified, she asked him to do the same.
De La Paz testified she also told him she hadn't deleted the first video he sent, and so he made the sexually explicit video and sent it to her. He asked her to delete them both, and she said she would, he testified.
Under cross examination, De La Paz admitted that there was no evidence that any of these conversations had taken place, because he deleted all of his conversations with the girl from Facebook Messenger and deleted her from his Facebook friends list. He admitted he was Facebook friends with several other students at North Vermilion High School as well, but said he couldn't remember if he'd deleted all of them as friends.
De La Paz also acknowledged that he wasn't supposed to communicate with students except via official email, and that he wasn't supposed to have any unsupervised contact with students while he was a teacher in Vermilion Parish or while he was a teacher at STM - because both schools had strict policies about social media and unsupervised contact among teachers and students.
"You're the teacher. You're the adult," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Walker. "You're twice the age of (the victim)."
"That sounds right," De La Paz responded.
Walker asked De La Paz if he had received training as an educator to avoid inappropriate conversations and contact with students because teachers and tutors are in a position of power over children, and De La Paz responded that he was sure he'd been taught that during professional development training.
Walker also asked De La Paz if there was any evidence at all to support his version of events.
"There's no evidence - but she made that whole thing up, she made me do it. She forced you to masturbate," Walker said.
De La Paz' response was that he didn't say she forced him.
After his testimony wrapped up, the defense called George Rodriguez, a retired Homeland Security Special Agent who now serves as an expert on digital forensics. The only evidence he found related to the case was a sexually explicit video on the girl's phone that was recorded in December 2022. However, he said, there was no evidence she'd ever sent it to De La Paz, Rodriguez testified.
"You were looking for that, right?" Walker asked him.
"I didn't find it," Rodriguez testified.
He also testified that he spent more than 100 hours working on the case, but never found the evidence that the government's digital forensics expert found - which was the video of De La Paz asking the girl to make him a video. The girl had more than 11,000 videos on her phone, he responded.
The trial began Tuesday morning with opening statements from Walker and defense attorney Kevin Stockstill. As of noon, four government witnesses had testified, including the alleged victim. The courtroom was sealed for her testimony, but although her name was used frequently during the morning testimony, KATC does not identify the victims of sex crimes.
In his opening statement, Walker told jurors that evidence would show the victim was 16 years old and a junior at North Vermilion High School when she met De La Paz, who was teaching math there. After her junior year, he left to work at STM, but she reached out to him because she was having trouble with math and wanted a tutor.
She was 17 years old when, in January of her senior year in high school, De La Paz sent her a video of himself asking her to create an explicit video of herself, Walker alleged. De La Paz then sent her a video of himself lying on a bed and masturbating. And, he sent her an explicit photograph of his body part, Walker alleged.
After he sent those things, De La Paz asked the girl to delete all the messages, Walker said. They were sent via Facebook Messenger, he said, and alleged that De La Paz also erased all evidence from his own phone that they had ever communicated.
Walker told jurors he would call the Vermilion Parish Sheriff's detective who first talked to the girl when her school principal brought her to the station; the Homeland Security agent who took over the investigation; the Homeland Security forensics analyst who went through the phones, iCloud accounts and Facebook accounts of De La Paz and the girl. Lastly, he said, the girl herself would testify.
In his opening statement, Stockstill first told jurors that their job was to stand between the government and his client, "your fellow citizen," as the government attempts to convict him of a crime.
"You're not judging Jacob De La Paz, you're judging them," he said, referring to the prosecution, or as he called them, "the government."
Stockstill then laid out a defense that appears to rely on several points.
First, that when De La Paz created the video asking for an explicit video of the girl, it already had been created. He only made the "ask" video, as the defense attorney termed it, because the girl had told him to. The attempted production charge requires that De La Paz asked the girl to make the video, his attorney argued.
Next, Stockstill said he would present evidence that the girl had told De La Paz she was 18 years old, and that she was the one who turned their innocuous conversations about math toward a personal, and sexual, nature. He said he also would call the defense's own forensics analyst to testify as to what he found when he looked at the evidence.
Stockstill did acknowledge that the conversations that De La Paz had with the girl were "inappropriate," but reminded the jury that there are specific charges against him, and the government is required to prove the elements of those offenses.
During testimony, Lt. Regina Suire of the Vermilion Parish Sheriff's Office testified that the girl and her principal came to the office in April 2023 and showed her the video of De La Paz asking her to create an explicit video, as well as the explicit video he created.
Both videos were entered into evidence and played for the jury and the courtroom. The federal courthouse is equipped with screens for jurors to see or watch evidence, as well as a large screen on the wall that the entire courtroom can see. The videos were played on those screens.
At that time, Suire testified, the only messages between the girl and De La Paz left on the girl's phone were about her failing a math test in February 2023, Suire testified. She then turned the case over to Homeland Security.
Special Agent Colby Kendrick was next up; he was the Homeland agent who took it over. He focuses on child exploitation cases, specifically identifying people who are sexually interested in children, he said.
Kendrick testified that he got search warrants for both phones, both iCloud accounts, both Facebook accounts and both Facebook Messenger accounts. He also got a search warrant for De La Paz's Youngsville home, and pictures he took of the living room and the bedroom were entered into evidence.
Those photos, when compared to the videos and photo, showed furniture and bedding that appeared to match the backgrounds of the videos and photo. They also were shown on the jurors' and courtroom screens, side-by-side.
Under Stockstill's cross-examination, he testified that his investigation began after a boyfriend of the girl's found the "ask" video and circulated it online.
Next to testify was Carol Sanders, a computer forensics analyst for Homeland. She looked into the phones and accounts. Sanders testified that she could find no evidence on De La Paz's phone of the Facebook or Facebook Messenger apps, and no evidence that he had ever communicated with the girl - except for a friend request from the girl, which De La Paz accepted, that was sent in January 2023.
However, in response to questioning from Walker, she testified that De La Paz would have been able to see the girl's date of birth - including the year she was born - even before they were friends. The girl's date of birth was on her Facebook profile, and since her security setting allowed "friends of friends" to see her profile - and she and De La Paz had several mutual friends who were students - he could have seen her date of birth at any time, Sanders testified.
She was born in June 2005, Sanders testified, meaning she was 17 years old in January 2023.
Sanders found the explicit photo of De La Paz's body part on the girl's phone, and the data attached to it showed it had been seen on that phone on January 12, 2023. That would be the date it was received by the phone, but doesn't show when it was created, she testified.
Because the videos had been erased - at Suire's direction in April - it wasn't possible to determine when they had been received by that phone, she testified. There was a copy of the "ask" video on the phone, because it had been texted to someone as an attachment, Sanders testified.
Following Sanders' testimony, the court sealed the courtroom and the girl - who had left the courtroom when Stockstill began his opening statement - returned. Two women with her were allowed to stay in the courtroom for her testimony.
The trial resumed Tuesday afternoon around 1:30 p.m.
Here's some more background:
Just months after De La Paz was indicted in 2023, another STM coach was arrested, and indicted, on similar charges. He pleaded guilty and has been sentenced.
Angel Cardona, 35, pleaded guilty to one count of the indictment against him; in exchange, the government agreed to dismiss the other two charges after he is sentenced. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison. Hewas sentencedto 10 years in prison.
The indictment accused Cardona of attempting to create child pornography on July 11 and July 13 of last year, and of using a facility between June 6 and June 24 to entice a child to engage in criminal sexual activity.
In court, he admitted to the enticement charge, admitting that he reached out to a person he thought was a 13-year-old girl in early June 2023. The person, to whom he was speaking online, said they were going to summer school and Cardona said he "thought I could help them." He continued talking to the person - who actually was an FBI agent - for about five weeks.
Then he asked for pictures of her, and agreed to meet her in person; they made a date to meet at Veteran's Park in Lafayette on July 24. Cardona told the judge that he asked for sexually explicit photos of the child. He used the Whisper and Kik apps, records show.
To read about his guilty plea, click here.
