Bluffton man charged with uploading child sexual abuse imagery online is former teacher
A Bluffton man who was arrested and charged last week with sexual exploitation of a minor for allegedly uploading child pornography worked as a teacher at Bridges Preparatory School prior to 2019, a school administrator confirmed Tuesday.
Timothy Sheaffer, 32, was arrested at his Heritage at New Riverside home on Friday following a months-long investigation into child sexual abuse imagery being uploaded to the internet.
Maj. Bob Bromage with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday that additional charges are expected against Sheaffer, who has been released from Beaufort County Detention Center under a $20,000 personal recognizance bond — meaning he was released on his promise to appear in court later without having to put up cash.
According to his LinkedIn profile, Sheaffer began working as a middle school social studies teacher at Bridges Prep, a kindergarten through 12th-grade public charter school in Beaufort, in 2015.
The school’s chief executive officer, Gary McCulloch, said Tuesday that Sheaffer has not been an employee there since at least 2019, when McCulloch was hired, and that he believed it had been “four-plus” years since Sheaffer worked there.
Sheaffer’s LinkedIn profile lists him as still being employed at Bridges Prep. It’s unclear when he stopped working there and it could not be determined where he’s been working since.
McCulloch added that investigator Jennifer Snider with Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office on the case “came and met with us when there was an arrest just because he was a former teacher of ours. She just wanted to give us a heads-up.”
He said Snider had called this a “recent investigation.”
Sheaffer was arrested Friday following a tip from the S.C. attorney general’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Sheriff’s Office investigators obtained a warrant from a Beaufort County magistrate judge to arrest Sheaffer and search his home for the electronic devices he allegedly used to upload child sexual abuse images.
Bridges Prep has four separate campuses and serves students from most parts of Beaufort County, according to online posts.
If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, help can be reached at the National Sexual Assault Hotline at (800) 656-4673. Or visit the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network site.
This story was originally published February 22, 2022 at 2:19 PM.