How does someone facing voyeurism and child pornography charges come just days away from attending one of New England’s most prestigious colleges?
It happened this year and involved a student accused of committing crimes at a high school he attended here in Connecticut.
John Zadrozny, 20, has been showing up for court in connection with a pair of criminal cases against him in 2021.
He has pleaded not guilty to his charges.
Get Connecticut local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Connecticut newsletters.
Arrest warrant affidavits said in one case, the former Avon Old Farms student impersonated a 17-year-old girl on Twitter so he could obtain lurid photos. In the other, it’s one count of possession of child pornography, plus unrelated, multiple voyeurism offenses for allegedly video recording or photographing AOF classmates in bathrooms and locker rooms.
We spoke with an AOF classmate who said he knows Zadrozny and did not want to be identified.
“My reaction was just disgust. I was so frustrated that you know, like you dragged not only your own reputation down but you know, a whole school's reputation down,” the student said.
Local
NBC Connecticut Investigates began looking into this last winter after being contacted by an AOF parent who said the prestigious private school downplayed the situation. AOF disputes the characterization. It has said Zadrozny, an advisor in a freshman dorm, was removed from the campus after the school learned of charges against him.
By the fall of 2021 Zadrozny, a senior, had gained admission to another prestigious private school in Connecticut, the Frederick Gunn School in Washington, which said to NBC Connecticut Investigates that he was only there for 12 days.
That’s when Zadrozny seems to have left the private school track.
Public schools are legally obligated to educate students.
Next, it was down to Westport, Connecticut.
Public records indicate Zadrozny attended Staples High School, part of Westport’s public school district. That was what he listed on college sports recruitment pages.
Westport Public Schools would not confirm he graduated, citing federal privacy laws.
You would think the story might end here, and Zadrozny would spend his time dealing with his criminal charges. But in August this year, he was days away from attending Boston College when it said it rescinded his deferred acceptance due to him facing discipline at AOF and his pending criminal charges.
Boston College told us, “We knew none of this. We thought he was still at Avon Old Farms. He was obligated to disclose if he was facing criminal charges. He failed to do that.”
Boston College added it found out about the situation at AOF from a Connecticut parent.
We tried asking Zadrozny about the allegations outside court, but he walked away without answering.
Kathryn Robb, executive director of Child USAdvocacy, which has written state and federal legislation to prevent student abuse, said she believes this case exhibits institutional failure on multiple levels.
“Am I surprised? Hell no, I'm not surprised. This is happening every day,” Robb said.
She said she supports teaching educators how to spot abuse.
“They need to understand what looks like sort of predatory behavior, what looks like crossing the line, what isn't crossing the line,” Robb said.
A recent CT Office of Legislative Research report says if a troubled student is moving from one public school to another, there are ways to notify the receiving school. However, once a transfer involves private schools, many of those safeguards are gone.
We don’t know whether any of the schools Zadrozny attended after AOF were aware of the charges against him. They had limited responses to our questions, due to student privacy.
We asked Sen. Heather Somers (R-Groton), who served on the education committee in the legislature, what could be done in the upcoming session to close this loophole.
“I think it's something that has to be brought to the legislature's attention. We have to find a way to balance your privacy with keeping people safe. And that's always a tough one. But I think we can do better than what we have on the books right now,” Somers said.
Another idea Kathryn Robb floated was the elimination of statutes of limitations currently in place for civil suits involving these types of crimes, to serve as a potential deterrent to would be perpetrators.
