The FBI has alleged a man altered images of Penn-Trafford students for pornography purposes.
Stephen Dickson, of New Haven, Connecticut, allegedly took photos of young students from the district’s website and digitally altered them to create child pornography.
“Our children are victims,” Carly Bouch, an affected parent, said at the district’s board meeting this past Monday. “They don’t know it, but they’re victims. Our families are victims.”
Bouch told Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 that she got a random knock at her door in early September.
“It was the FBI,” she said. “My husband talked to them. He came back and told me some sick man got a hold of a picture and did something explicit with it.”
The FBI confirmed Dickson was arrested in 2025. The images found dated back to 2023.
Rich Evanchec, special agent in charge for the FBI Pittsburgh Office, said the investigation is ongoing.
“There are efforts going on around the country to make sure we can understand what happened there and get justice where we deserve to have that,” Evanchec said. “We are in touch with local authorities about that. It’s more common now for the FBI to see super intelligence being used to manipulate images. We find, here in Pittsburgh, that there are individuals who are being photographed. Those images are being manipulated in such a way to meet somebody’s very distorted desires with that.”
District administrators said in a statement that they were first alerted about this in the summer. To their knowledge, two photographs of students were taken.
Administrators claim they were told not to inform the community.
“The Penn-Trafford School District administration was notified in the Summer of 2026 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that an individual had obtained two photographs of district students from our website that were originally posted approximately four years ago. The individual subsequently altered the photographs to create inappropriate and explicit images. The FBI directed the district not to contact the affected families or disclose any information to the public because they were working on contacting the parents for interviews and victim notification. The district fully cooperated with this request.
We are deeply saddened and disturbed that our students were victimized in such a manner. The safety, well-being, and privacy of our students remain among our highest priorities, and we recognize the emotional impact that an incident of this nature can have on students and their families.
We sincerely appreciate the efforts of the FBI and DOJ in Operation Restoring Justice, which resulted in 205 child abuse arrests nationwide. This included the individual responsible for the harm in this matter, Stephen Dickson, a resident of Connecticut. For further information on Operation Restoring Justice, please see Operation Restoring Justice .
Out of respect for the privacy of the students and families involved, the district will not be providing additional details at this time.”
“I immediately went back to my parents [message board] and opted my two kids in that school out of pictures,” Bouch said. “If you open up the school district website right now, there's elementary-age children all over that school district website.”
Bouch said she and the other affected families wish the school had reached out to them after the FBI did.
“You've had two months to send some kind of public notice,” Bouch said. “You would hope someone would make some kind of generalized statement or something. This is affecting kids. The families are going through the motions. Knowing that you have a support system somewhere you can turn to would be helpful.”
As the investigation continues, Bouch is one of multiple parents hoping to stay informed as the case progresses.
“It makes me want to pull my kids out,” she said. “However, they're thriving, and I would hate to do that for my personal reasons. Just be transparent. That's one of the biggest issues: transparency.”
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