Substitute teacher jailed on child pornography charge

Eric Hafen, 32, was charged with a single count of possessing child pornography after investigators discovered sexually explicit images of children as young as 7 or 8 on his laptop computer, police said.

Hafen was most recently substituting at Government Hill Elementary School and working there after school as a Camp Fire USA counselor, though school officials say he won't be filling in anymore.

According to an affidavit filed in court by prosecutors, police on Saturday got a call from a friend of Hafen who said there were images of children being exploited on Hafen's laptop computer. Police got a search warrant and interviewed Hafen at his apartment in the 400 block of D Street, where he told detectives he was employed as a teaching assistant and substitute at an elementary school, according to the affidavit.

Hafen told detectives he knew the images and videos were on the computer and said most of it involved girls between 8 and 12 years old, the affidavit says. He was booked in the Anchorage jail with bail set at $7,500. The extent of the library was not known Monday.

"They don't have a complete forensic outline of his hard drive yet," police spokeswoman Anita Shell said. "They're going to do that over the course of the next few days -- analyze everything that's on the hard drive and everything that's been deleted and see how much there is. So additional charges are most likely pending."

Also not known Monday was whether any of the youths in the images were local or whether Hafen gathered the images solely from the Internet. Police were working with school district officials and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to identify the kids.

Eric Tollefsen, executive director of human resources for the school district, said Hafen was a substitute teacher who just finished his first year with the district. He was most recently working for Government Hill Elementary School but has worked at schools at all echelons from elementary to high school, he said. Previously, Hafen worked as an educator outside Alaska, he said.

Hafen, like the roughly 3,100 other substitutes in the district, was required to undergo a federal and state background check, which he passed, Tollefsen said. As soon as district officials learned about the charges, Hafen was removed from the list of potential substitutes, he said.

Camp Fire Alaska chief executive Barbara Dubovich said Hafen cleared a reference and background check before he was hired April 12. Because he is a new employee, he was in a probationary period, she said.

"He has been under direct supervision while working in our after-school program," Dubovich said. "I assure you, while we are just learning about Mr. Hafen's arrest, we will fully cooperate with the authorities. The safety of all children is our highest priority, and we will keep our Government Hill families updated as we learn more."

Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.