A former Acadiana educator has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison on child pornography charges.
Jacob De La Paz was convicted at trial of one count attempted receipt of child pornography; he pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted possession of child pornography.
On Friday, he was sentenced to seven years in prison on each charge, with those sentences to be served concurrently, or at the same time. When he has finished his prison time, he will serve five years of supervised release.
While on supervised release, he will have certain conditions to follow, court records show:
- He will participate in a sex offender treatment program
- He will submit to polygraph testing as ordered
- He will not have internet access on his computer, cell phone or any other device, without permission from his probation officer.
- He will not associate with any minor younger than 18 years of age unless the minor's parent or legal guardian is present, except for "incidental contact in normal commercial life."
- He will comply with the Computer Monitoring Program, including installation of monitoring software on any device he's allowed to use, and he will not tamper with the software.
- He will disclose all Internet Service Provider information, usernames, and passwords for computer devices, email accounts, and any other network accounts.
- He will not view or possess any materials, including pictures, photographs, books, writings, drawings, videos, video games, pictures or computer-generated images or picture, whether made or produced by electronic, mechanical, or other means, depicting and/or describing “sexually explicit conduct” or child pornography as defined in federal law.
De La Paz had faced a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison on the receipt charge and up to 10 years in prison on the possession charge. He has been in prison since he was indicted in May 2023, and he received credit for that time he already has served.
As part of his guilty plea De La Paz admitted that, in January 2023 when he was a teacher at St. Thomas More Catholic High School in Lafayette, he began communication with a prior student at North Vermilion High School, where he used to teach. They were using Facebook messenger. This former student, who was a minor, needed help with math. De La Paz admitted that he asked the girl to send him a sexually explicit image of herself to him.
During his trial, De La Paz put the blame on the girl for the exchange, saying that she told him to ask her for a sexually explicit video.
De La Paz was a coach at STM when the videos came to light last spring; he 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, De La Paz 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. To read more about the case, click here and here.
To read our story about his conviction, click here. To read our story about the trial testimony, click here.
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.
