A California school teacher was arrested and charged with incest after one of her students recognized her having sex with an underage family member in a video uploaded on a porn website.
Dawn Giannini,49, from Palo Alto, and who is the wife of a US Army Lt Col, is reportedly in custody while the investigation continues. The student who reported the video saw one of his classmates, an underage female family member of the accused, spotted his teacher in a clip while scrolling through PornHub.
The matter was then brought to the school's principal, who called the police, which resulted in Giannini's arrest. Giannini was a fourth-grade teacher at St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic School in Palo Alto in 2015, and is currently married to Thomas Giannini, a US Army Lieutenant Colonel. Before that, she was a special education assistant and substitute for the Redwood City School District.
It is being reported that Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker sent out an email to parents about Giannini, saying that while it is believed she did not assault a student, the information is still "truly heartbreaking."
San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe, however, has refused to identify how Giannini and the young girl, who was 14 at the time of the crimes, were related. "We know the victim was sexually active, and there were a lot of videos that were uploaded," DA Wagstaffe said. "We know that this occurred in at least two counties. It occurred here in our county, in Redwood City and there was a trip down to Santa Cruz that she took with the victim and there was sexual activity there."
Reports say that Giannini is accused of having a sexual relationship with the underage family member from November 2014 until November 2015. There are other allegations as well, which claim that she recorded some of the sexual interactions, which were then later uploaded onto the PornHub website.
These allegations seem to have brought a lot of shame to the entire family of four, which include the Giannini's two teenage children.
Her husband, Thomas, who has had three overseas deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan as a high-ranking military officer, is seeing his wife face two dozen charges including seven counts of lewd act on a child, six counts of oral copulation on a child under 16 years old, six counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object, one count of showing porn to a child and one count of incest.
Giannini has since been fired from the Redwood City School District and will not be able to work at the district ever again. She was arrested on October 18 and appeared in court on Thursday and did not enter a plea, Wagstaffe said. She remains in jail in lieu of $1.75 million bail and is set to appear in court next on November 5.