Senator Wants Tougher Laws After Brooke Principal Arrest
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WHEELING -- The recent arrest of Brooke High School's principal has one West Virginia lawmaker wanting to amend current state code pertaining to secret recordings and privacy.
Sen. Ryan Weld, R-Brooke, wants to toughen offenses from misdemeanors to felonies.
Suspended Principal Eric Michael James, 53, presently is facing felony charges including intentionally intercepting or attempting to intercept wire, oral or electronic communication and breaking and entering a nonresidence. He is being held in the West Virginia Northern Regional Jail on $100,000 cash bond.
Weld spoke of wanting to amend recording and privacy laws with The Intelligencer after addressing the Wheeling Rotary on Tuesday and talking about his book, "The Foundations of Wellsburg."
Under current West Virginia statutes, placing a recording device in a school locker room is only considered a misdemeanor offense, Weld explained. It takes a second conviction on the same crime for it to be considered a felony.
"I think (first offense) absolutely needs to be a felony," he said. "It also, I believe, should require you to be placed on the sex offender list....
"You are invading somebody's privacy in a very delicate place."
A second statute that needs to be amended pertains to disclosure of any video recorded by the secret device, Weld continued. Under current law, sharing the video -- like the offense of placing a recording device -- is only considered a misdemeanor.
"I am working to update both those statutes to make both those offenses felonies," he added. "It's an absolutely awful situation."
Weld is a 1998 alumnus of Brooke High School.
"What has been heartening to see is the community rally around the staff and students at that school and realize these were the actions of one sick individual and not representative of who Brooke County is and what Brooke High School is," he said. "It has been good to see the community support the students and staff there."
Weld told Rotary the inspiration for his book, "The Foundations of Wellsburg," came from the home he grew up in with his mother, Roseanna, and stepfather, Tony Filberto.
"I wanted to do this from a different perspective -- something unique in its approach to history and tells a story of a particular place," he said. "I picked a number of significant homes in Wellsburg -- either historically or architecturally significant -- to tell the story of the town by telling the stories of the people who lived in the homes, built them and raised their children there.
"You are able to tie these people into major events happening in the city's history."
The Filbertos moved into their house in Wellsburg in 1986, but it was only in more recent years that his mother told him that despite living there for decades she knew very little about the history of her home.
Weld explained he used his skills as an attorney to do title searches and learned that the original owner of the home was William Scott. Scott was the owner of the Scott Ice Cream Co. and had two confectioneries in Wellsburg during the 1920s.