Missing football coach Travis Turners tiny school district had 3 other teachers accused of child sex crimes: Its a culture
The tiny Virginia school district that’s been rocked by still-missing football coach Travis Turner’s child sex scandal has employed accused pedophile teachers before — including a middle school band director who planned to share photos of students with creepo friends online.Three other Wise County Public Schools teachers — including two who were later convicted — faced charges of child sex crimes over the past five years alone before Travis’ case came to light, The Post has learned.The tight-knit, football-loving community was thrust into the national spotlight just before Thanksgiving, when Turner, the championship-winning Central High School coach and married father, disappeared amid a child porn and solicitation of a minor probe.But predators preying on schoolchildren are no strangers to the county, which is home to 5,500 students across 13 schools.And some have gotten away with wrist-slap punishments.Among them was Dalton Matthew Bates, a band leader at Wise County’s LF Addington Middle School and Union High School who was arrested in 2020 after being caught plotting with a pedo pal to share snaps of his young students.“I just got a job teaching middle school so I’m gonna be trying to resist temptation,” Bates, then 23, wrote a fellow sicko on Snapchat that year, the Mountain Eagle reported.
“Hopefully I can get pics of students through my fake account and I’ll send u,” he added.Bates was charged with 20 counts of possessing child pornography, but two years later pleaded guilty to just 10 counts and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years per count — but the years were to be served concurrently and he was credited with time served, meaning he was out soon after confessing his crimes.Then in 2023, Timothy Lee Meador — a coach and teacher at Union High in Big Stone Gap, where Turner led the football team — pleaded guilty to child solicitation and indecent liberties.Meador, then 28, spent just over a year in prison.And as recently as August, C...