A former Harriton High School teacher was sentenced to 30 years for soliciting nude photos from teens

A former teacher at Harriton High School was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in federal prison for posing as a teenager on social media and soliciting hundreds of sexually explicit photos from young girls, including a student at the school.

U.S. District Judge John Murphy said Jeremy Schobel, 33 — who taught English at Harriton, in Rosemont, for about a year before his 2022 arrest — had committed a “shocking abuse of trust” by deceiving young victims and preying on their vulnerabilities.

Schobel, Murphy said, “chose over and over and over again” to commit his crimes, seeking out teenagers online, exchanging sexually explicit messages with them, then asking them to send him nude photos or indecent videos.

“These crimes were planned, methodical, they required many, many steps, concerted effort, constant attention, and a focused conscious scheming that was designed to manipulate children,” Murphy said. “It spanned many years and required frequent work. And that speaks to someone who knew what he was doing and had many opportunities to stop.”

Schobel dipped his head but did not otherwise visibly react as the sentence was imposed. Earlier in the hearing, he apologized for his actions, saying he now recognized that he caused “enormous and endless” damage to his victims. He described his conduct as a compulsion that spiraled out of control and said he would seek to spend the rest of his life atoning for his mistakes.

“I did not understand when I was in it how corrosive it was,” Schobel said. “I couldn’t see its potential for harm, and now 15 months removed … I see it so clearly, I see it so constantly.”

The mother of one of Schobel’s victims, however, testified that she did not believe that Schobel was truly remorseful. Her daughter was a student at Harriton who got duped into sending Schobel explicit photos. The mother said Schobel, who taught some of the girl’s friends, greeted her in the hallways even after receiving the pictures. (Schobel denied that he knew any of his victims or targeted any students.)

Schobel “would not hesitate to do this again,” the mother said.

Schobel’s activities were first flagged in late 2022 by the French social media site Yubo, which alerted authorities that two linked accounts appeared to be targeting and grooming teenage girls, seeking out girls’ accounts and asking them to start exchanging messages on Snapchat.

The screen names — “jillmoreno131″ and “sophiavan423″ — purported to be those of a 17-year-old girl, but investigators later found that both were tied to Schobel. And a review of his activity on Yubo and Snapchat showed he was using IP addresses not only at his home in Philadelphia but also at Harriton, where investigators learned he was employed as an English teacher.

After obtaining a search warrant, investigators found that the Snapchat accounts contained “hundreds of purported minor victims, thousands of pages of chats, and thousands of pornographic images and videos,” prosecutors wrote in court documents. Schobel was seeking out victims and exchanging messages “day after day, for more than three years,” prosecutors wrote.

Schobel eventually admitted his actions to authorities but denied targeting any of his students.

Then, in the days after his 2023 arrest for child pornography, as word began circulating around the school community, a girl who attended Harriton said she was one of Schobel’s victims and spoke to the FBI. Investigators found images and messages corroborating her account.

The girl’s mother said in her testimony Wednesday that her daughter has been left traumatized and deeply ashamed by the episode. And she took particular offense to what she described as Schobel’s willingness to solicit messages and photos from the girl while also running into her in school.

“The fact that he was able to look my daughter in the eye … and continue doing what he was doing, I’m mortified by it. I’m broken by it, and it’s traumatized my family,” she said.

Joseph D’Andrea, Schobel’s attorney, denied that Schobel knew any of his victims, saying Schobel was effectively indiscriminate while seeking out girls to send him photos.

Another victim testified Wednesday that explicit photos she had sent to another man as a teen years ago were found on Schobel’s phone. That revelation, she said, has caused her to feel as if she cannot escape a mistake she made as a vulnerable young girl.

“I can change and I can grow and be a new person — but I can’t outrun or escape or outgrow the offenders who seek out far more young people like the person that I was,” the woman said.

(The Inquirer does not identify victims of sex crimes unless the person agrees to be named.)

Schobel was charged in June 2023, and pleaded guilty in March to counts including receiving and manufacturing child pornography related to six victims.

Since his arrest, he said Wednesday, his wife divorced him and moved out of state with their two children, and he has had to come to terms with the fact that he embarrassed and disappointed his family, friends, and former students and colleagues.

“I do not understand how I became so entrenched in behavior that is so opposed to my morality,” he said. “I am so profoundly sorry.”