This website has spent a good deal of bandwidth noting the Lexington Herald-Leader and the McClatchy Company’s mugshot policy. In particular, we have noted the Herald-Leader’s odd habit of violating that policy when it comes to white criminal suspects, but adhering closely to it when the suspects are black.

Well, in this case, the suspect is white, and the paper did not publish his mugshot. Given my disagreement with that policy, I will.

Jason Lee Sharp (Fayette County Detention Center)

Central Kentucky teacher arrested on rape, sexual abuse charges

By Karla Ward | June 19, 2021 | 4:55 PM EDT | Updated: June 20, 2021 | 1:06 PM EDT

Lexington police have arrested a Central Kentucky teacher, charging him with rape, sodomy and sex abuse.

Jason L. Sharp, 32, of Lexington, was arrested Thursday on charges of third-degree rape, third-degree sodomy and first-degree sexual abuse, court records show.

Sharp teaches math at East Jessamine High School, according to the school’s website.

There’s a little more at the link.

A couple of points:

• While Mr Sharp was arrested on Thursday, reporter Karla Ward’s story did not initially appear until Saturday. Since the McClatchy policy is that an editor must approve the publication of a mugshot, and the Herald-leader does not even publish a Saturday edition, it is possible that no editor was available to approve the publication of the mugshot.
• Miss Ward noted that, “The circumstances surrounding the charges were not immediately clear.” When one reads a story about a teacher being accused of a sex crime, the automatic assumption is that the victim or victims were students. The Herald-Leader article does not state that such is the case, and it is very possible that any victims of Mr Sharp’s might be adults and not students at East Jessamine or any other school.

The article notes that Jessamine County Schools Superintendent Matt Moore was informed of the arrest on Friday, and stated that the school and he would cooperate fully with any police investigation, “if requested,” a statement which would seem to state that the police had not made any such request at the time. The charges listed in his arrest record do not make any statement that his (alleged) victim was a minor.

One of the points in the McClatchy mugshot policy that editors are supposed to consider in their decision-taking is whether the suspect is a “public official.” That raises the obvious question: what is a “public official.” East Jessamine High School is a public school, making Mr Sharp a public employee. Does simply being a public employee make someone a public official? Since public education in Kentucky is primarily funded by the state, I am one of the Kentucky taxpayers who furnished his salary and benefits! Yes, I would define him as a public official.

But, given my criticisms of the newspaper for publishing the mugshots of white suspects while concealing those of black suspects, it behooves me to note when the paper follows McClatchy policies when it comes to white suspects.
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Updated!: June 21, 2021

The Herald-Leader is now reporting that Mr Sharp’s alleged victim was a minor:

A Central Kentucky teacher charged with rape, sexual abuse and sodomy allegedly committed the offenses against someone who was under 16 years old, according to arrest records.

Jason L. Sharp’s alleged victim was under 16 years old when the sexual abuse happened in July 2018, police wrote in an arrest citation obtained by the Herald-Leader. Sharp teaches math at East Jessamine High School, according to the school’s website. Police wrote in Sharp’s citation that he made sexual contact with a minor while being “a person in a position of special trust.”

I added a link to this article to the comments section in the original article, in response to a commenter who asked the Herald-Leader for a mugshot of the alleged offender. Though the paper left in place three spam comments hawking online income jobs, it deleted my comments with links. Can’t let anyone see that mugshot!