A Douglas County principal arrested in a child sex sting had a $50,000 bond set Tuesday during his first appearance in a DeKalb County courtroom.
John Harold McGill, who has been suspended as principal of Mount Carmel Elementary School in Douglasville, is charged with computer or electronic pornography and child exploitation, a felony. He was being held in the DeKalb County Jail in lieu of a $50,000 bond, said Mac Pilgrim, McGill’s attorney. As of early Tuesday evening, he had not yet bonded out.
Sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning, McGill responded to a Craigslist ad placed by a mother “seeking someone for her teenage daughter,” according to the arrest warrant obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The warrant says McGill made contact via both email and phone with an undercover officer posing online as the mother and told her he had “taught other girls” and he would “go slow.”
McGill was one of 14 men arrested as part of a GBI sting designed to ensnare child predators.
Pilgrim said McGill would plead not guilty.
“There’s no mention of the (girl’s) age in that warrant,” Pilgrim said. “The warrant said ‘teenage daughter.’ That could mean 16 or 18. The evidence is different than the warrant.”
McGill was ordered Tuesday to stay off the Internet and to stay away from nonrelated minors. As for his three stepchildren with whom he lives — ages 17, 14 and 9 — Pilgrim said McGill would either live with one of his three adult children in Alabama, if prosecutors allow, or his wife’s children would move out of the house pending a change to the bond conditions.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for McGill at 9 a.m. March 17.
McGill’s wife sat stone-faced in the rear of the courtroom during Tuesday’s hearing. “She’s shell-shocked. She’s embarrassed,” Pilgrim said of his client’s wife. “But she’s standing behind him.”
At a school board meeting Monday night, Sandra Williams, a retired Douglas County school administrator, was named interim principal of Mount Carmel Elementary.
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