Gay Teacher Fired after Hacker Leaks a Sex Video

A high school teacher near Little Rock, Ark. learned Sept. 29, 2015 that an unidentified hacker had posted an intimate video of the man and an adult male partner on his faculty webpage. Brian Cody Bray believes the attacker broke into his home computer to steal the video along with student contact information. 

"The school’s principal and the executive director of the school district summoned him to a meeting the following week, where he said he attempted to explain that someone hacked into his email account and apparently gained access to his user names and passwords for various accounts, including his account with the online file storage site known as Dropbox," the Washington Blade reports. 

According to a website Bray created to explain the incident, which he calls a cyber hate crime, the hacker changed the name of the Dropbox folder in which the video file was stored from “Private” to “FagTeachBray.” The alteration was a clear sign, Bray says, that the hacker had targeted him because he is gay.

It was widely known at Bray’s school that he is gay. 

The video was first posted on the school website on Monday, Sept. 28, 2015, according to a posting time stamp on the site. On that same day, someone identifying himself as “Jonathan” began sending text messages to one of Bray’s students telling the student that his teacher Bray was a “fag” and that the student should look at the video.

Bray, who posted a screen shot of the text messages, said he believes that “Jonathan” is the hacker, whom Bray doesn’t believe is a student. The caller's cell phone number was obfuscated.

Bray saved the student’s phone number in his computer files along with the numbers of other students who he sometimes spoke with about school-related activities. He believes the hacker obtained those numbers when he or she gained access to Bray’s personal files.

School officials fired him on Oct. 8, 2015 because they said he had lost authority over his students.

Arkansas doesn’t have a state hate crimes law.

Bray continues to grapple with the emotional strain of the posting of the video on the website and the derailing of his teaching career, he says. He has created a GoFundMe site to raise funds for basic expenses. The fundraising site includes a link to his new website, which provides a detailed account of how the suspect hacked into his Dropbox account and posted the video on the school website.