Ex-Teacher Pleads Guilty To Child Porn, Avoiding Jail Time

EVANSTON, IL — A longtime substitute music teacher pleaded guilty Wednesday to having graphic images on a cellphone he brought to Evanston Township High School last year. Ronald Hornish, 61, of the 6500 block of North Greenview Avenue in Chicago, was sentenced to two years of sex offender probation and ordered to pay about $1,200 in fines and fees, the Evanston Review reports.

On Hornish's first day as a substitute teacher at ETHS, he left a cellphone unattended, authorities said. A student who found the phone and began looking at its contents to try to figure out whose it was stumbled across pornographic images appearing to show children. The student reported it to school officials, who figured out that it was Hornish's phone and began a criminal investigation, according to police and prosecutors.

Hornish was charged in August 2016 with five counts of possessing child pornography after investigators found a computer in his home allegedly containing hundreds of explicit images involving minors, some appearing to be younger than 10, prosecutors said.

Hornish, was previously a music teacher at Downers Grove South High School, according to a Community High School District 99 spokesperson, and taught at Morton West High School in Berwyn, according to a LinkedIn page in his name, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Police and prosecutors said there is no indication that Hornish had any pornographic images of any of his students, and the District 99 spokesperson told the Tribune the school had not gotten any reports of him being involved in any inappropriate contact with students.

_{Top photo: Ronald Hornish booking photograph | Cook County Sheriff}