Tipped off by America Online, the FBI had cause to move quickly when it first became aware of Charney in late 2009. "Let me know if you ever want to make it happen with one of my boys, they're always available," said one e-mail sent to Charney, who used an alias screen name.
Charney is the second child-sex offender uncovered at the Hershey School in recent years and the latest in a string of sexually charged issues to confront the school's administration and its Board of Managers. It comes as the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office is investigating multimillion-dollar expenditures by the school of funds meant to sustain the institution and expand its enrollment.
Before the Charney case, the most publicized of the sexual improprieties was the school's decision in 2010 to settle the claims of five former students who said they had been sexually abused by Charles Koons 2d, a serial molester who gained access to the campus through his mother, a part-time house parent. Though a mother of a boy warned the school about Koons in the late 1990s, Koons continued to visit the campus.
In 2007 and 2006, two teachers, one male and one female, were prosecuted in separate cases for having sexual relations with students.
On a matter of sex among students, a 2005 letter became public this month in a federal lawsuit that described an incident in which four students were caught engaging in sex during a school-sponsored vacation to an amusement park in Ohio. A year after the 2004 incident, the vice president for residential life, Peter Gurt, is said to have joked about the situation during a school social event.
