Medicine Hat Media

Posts Tagged ‘Gregory Fritzke’

Former vice-principal Gregory Fritzke has received a 15 month jail sentencing after being convicted of accessing and distributing child pornography.

What do you think about the sentencing? Is it too light for having accessed and distributed child pornography? Will the overall term length lowered by how much time he has already served under house arrest? Would you want to give him a second chance and allow him to teach again? Voice your opinion by leaving a comment and voting on our poll located in the sidebar.

Our past articles on Gregory Fritzke include:


It looks like Gregory Fritzke will be headed to the gallows for real after pleading guilty to accessing and distributing child pornography.

After a lengthy investigation that began in 2008, a subsequent search of Fritzke’s computer by the Police found a total of 9 pornographic photos of children and 1 movie. Also included were some 180 pornographic photos of children that were either deleted or overwritten.

Fritzke, now 44, was using a file sharing program called Google Hello to distribute the content. This lead investigators to a resident in Pennsylvania who was also charged.

During his time as an educator, Frizke was at one time the former vice-principal Alexandria Middle School, where he taught physical education. He is said to have taken numerous leaves of absence from educating for undisclosed reasons, which sounds a little shady.

More details will be released once Fritzke undergoes a psychiatric assessment that was ordered by the court. This is to determine what risk he poses to re-offend and re-access child pornography.

Past coverage:


It has been a while since we have posted about Fritzke’s case. Since the last post, court dates have occurred and new information has been released to the public about his charges of sexual assault and accessing and distributing child pornography.

When I first posted about Fritzke I raised the issue that we didn’t have all the information and that he was not yet proven guilty at the time for either of his charges. It took a while, but his second charge which was the sexual assault was dismissed; however, in my opinion, he is still guilty of the act itself. For those who are interested, there is a sad and detailed description of what he allegedly did in the Medicine Hat News. Yes, the victim gave consent, but at her age (fourteen at the time) combined with his age and stature, it was still wrong, I think. This type of incident probably influenced the legal change of the age of sexual consent from fourteen to sixteen years old (Parliament, 2008); however, the law that was in place at the time of the incident was used instead of the recently changed version of the law. This meant that since the victim was fourteen at the time she legally could have given consent.

We aren’t privy to much information about his first charge (of accessing and distributing child pornography), but I doubt he will be the victor in that case.

Vice-principal’s sex assault charge dismissed by Alex McCuaig

Trial begins for Gregory Fritzke by Alex McCuaig


The story has changed somewhat since our original Gregory Fritzke post. Tuesday, police charged Gregory Fritzke, 43, ex-vice-principle from Ross Glenn School with two more charges: Sexual Assault and Sexual Exploitation to go on top of his original charge of Accessing and Distributing Child Pornography. The alleged assault is believed to have taken place in 2004 against a young girl at Alexandra Junior High School where Fritzke was vice-principle.

This is hard because on one side I hope this charge isn’t made up because it would just be one of those exploitation of the accused cases, but at the same time I hope it is made up because it’s really sick and terrible. Would people rather want this be true and have a tortured child or would they hope and pray that it’s made up to exploit the Fritzke case. What do you think?

To many, this simply reinforced their original beliefs and speculations; however, I am still cautious with saying he is not guilty of anything yet. He is due for court appearance on February 12th (tomorrow). Only after he is defined by law as guilty or innocent will I respectively call him either or – this isn’t the middle ages anymore (ordeal by fire/water).

We have will have more information after (and possibly during) the trial.

Original Post:

To the Gallows, Gregory Fritzke!

Angry comments below (sarcsm):


As plastered on the front page of the Medicine Hat News, Gregory Fritzke has been arrested and charged with accessing and distributing child pornography. Okay… pretty sick, but to make matters worse, he was the vice-principle at Ross Glen School. Start the angry parents riot! Parents of children that go to Ross Glen are going crazy, and this is just from the comments posted on the Medicine Hat News website (most of the comments are now gone when the Medicine Hat News website was updated), who knows what the future of Ticked Off & Tickled Pink will look like.

Gregory Fritzke, 43 - Image from CTV

Greg Fritzke, 43 - Image from CTV Calgary

Quotes have appeared like “We as a society need to screen the people involved in our childrens lives on a daily basis more carefully” from one commenter. Comments like this remind me of the Grey Hound bus situation – one person gets killed, or one sick bastard is all it takes to warrant spending thousands if not millions of dollars for these “screening” procedures. Obviously in this case, I believe the commenter is referring to using ourselves as a “screen” to weed out child pornography collectors (somehow). This is a rare and  isolated event in this community – just like the Grey Hound bus slaying. There’s no magic “pedophile-meter”, just like there is no method to gauge if somebody is just going to wind up and kill somebody; obviously there are warning signs to these types of psychological issues, but they aren’t accurate, even so, the average person is not trained to spot these “warning signs”. In no way am I defending Gregory Fritzke or his actions, I’m just against the irrationality involved with people commenting and ranting over these isolated events (isolated in terms of the Medicine Hat community, not on a global scale).

Supposedly Gregory Fritzke did not have any images/photography of children at the school in his stash – but the fact of the matter is he was a vice-principle and he seen kids all day. Obviously this makes parents feel pretty sick even if he didn’t actually harm any children at the school. Psychologically speaking, Gregory Fritzke knew that what he was doing was wrong which is why he never acted out on his thoughts at school, instead he went home and downloaded child porn to satisfy his urge. Obviously I’m not a psychologist but I’ve read enough on the subject to know that most of these people aren’t pure evil, Satan incarnates; rather, they may have psychologically traumatized in their past or some past experience made him this way (maybe he was molested as a child). Obviously I’m being general and pretty speculative on the incident until actual details arrive. The bottom line is he downloaded and looked at child pornography which is wrong, granted, but he is NOT a child molester, child rapist, nor did he physically abuse children in any way as far as anybody knows currently (this may have changed though – see below). Guilty before proven innocent? I guess there is no gray area to most people…

*UPDATE – February 11th, 2009*

More charges have been laid against Fritzke which leads me to not retract my above statement but to clarify. I said that “nor did he physically abuse children in any way as far as anybody knows currently” which is still the case right now since he has NOT been found guilty.

THE JUMP – Read the rest of this entry »


Events

Community




p include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar.php'); ?>