Two students who were manipulated into sending naked photographs to Winston Nguyen, a teacher at Saint Ann’s School, expressed their horror, humiliation and enduring pain in letters read aloud at his sentencing hearing on Wednesday.
“You begged for sexually explicit images of me to the point where I felt trapped,” one victim wrote, in a statement delivered by the prosecutor. “You wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
The other student wrote, “I have no idea if the people that I meet have seen my naked body.” She added that “I was at a mental low” when Mr. Nguyen, who was pretending to be a teenage boy, approached her online and that they engaged in a close relationship.
Now aware that Mr. Nguyen was not who he portrayed himself to be and that he shared her photographs with countless others online, she described feeling terrified that classmates — and college admissions officers — would learn that she was “the girl who sent nudes to the teacher.”
In Brooklyn criminal court, Judge Masateru Marubashi sentenced Mr. Nguyen, 38, to seven years in prison, followed by 10 years of supervision. He also must register as a sex offender and pay about $1,400 in fines.
Mr. Nguyen pleaded guilty earlier this month to one count of using a child in a sexual performance and five separate counts, representing five children, of “knowingly acting in a manner likely to be injurious to the physical, mental or moral welfare of a child less than 17 years.”
At the plea hearing, the judge, Philip V. Tisne, noted that if Mr. Nguyen were to be convicted of a felony after completing his sentence, he would automatically be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
He was arrested last summer and accused of tricking children into sending him lewd photographs and videos. At the time, he was a teacher at Saint Ann’s, an elite prep school in Brooklyn. The children he targeted were students at Saint Ann’s and other Brooklyn private schools.
Mr. Nguyen entered the courtroom on Wednesday in khaki green prison garb, his wrists handcuffed behind his back and his head slung low.
He had a black eye — a remnant, said his lawyer, Frank Rothman, of getting “beat up” while being held on Rikers Island on March 4, after pleading guilty the day before.
In court, Mr. Nguyen read a statement apologizing to the students and to the school community that “went out of its way to give me a second chance.”
This was the second time Mr. Nguyen was convicted of a felony and marked the latest development in a scandal that marred the reputation of Saint Ann’s and the administrators who hired and supervised him.
In 2019, Mr. Nguyen pleaded guilty to grand larceny and other charges after he was accused of stealing more than $300,000 from his employers, an older couple he worked for as a home health aide.
He served four months at the Rikers Island jail complex. About a year after his release, he was hired to be an administrative aide at Saint Ann’s, which charges about $60,000 per year in tuition and caters to New York’s wealthy creative class.
During the interview process, he alerted the school’s leadership that he had been convicted of a felony, and at least one Saint Ann’s employee urged the school not to hire him.
He quickly became an indispensable member of the staff, helping to manage logistics during the coronavirus pandemic as he integrated himself into the school community.
The school promoted Mr. Nguyen to math teacher in the fall of 2021 but did not reveal to parents his criminal record until after students discovered news stories about him on the internet.
In October 2021, Vince Tompkins, then the head of the school, sent parents an email about the new math teacher. “I can assure you that as with any teacher we hire, we are confident in Winston’s ability and fitness to educate and care for our students,” he wrote.
Within a year, students at Saint Ann’s and other Brooklyn private schools — some as young as 13 — began to receive solicitations via Snapchat for lewd photos and videos.
By February 2024, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office had notified Saint Ann’s that it was investigating the continued targeting of children by anonymous Snapchat accounts seeking sexual photographs and videos. School administrators did not tell parents.
Days before the end of the school year, Mr. Nguyen was arrested near Saint Ann’s. He was charged in July with 11 felony counts, including using a child in a sexual performance, promoting a sexual performance by a child and disseminating indecent material to a minor.
In December, Saint Ann’s released the findings of an investigation conducted by lawyers commissioned by the school’s board to determine how the school had come to employ a felon.
The blistering report said that the school administration had “shamed” parents who expressed concern about Mr. Nguyen’s background and had suggested they were not in step with the school’s progressive values.