As the investigation continues into claims that Oklahoma schools chief Ryan Walters had images of nude women on his office television during a meeting, one state lawmaker is offering a possible explanation: It was just an unfortunate mishap.
Explicit content began playing during an executive session of the State Board of Education in Walters’ office on July 24. A preliminary review of the graphic images that two board members — Becky Carson and Ryan Deatherage — saw on the TV during the meeting suggests the scenes were from a movie that began playing automatically due to a technical glitch with Samsung’s free streaming service. Oklahoma House Speaker Kyle Hilbert on Tuesday described the turn of events as a “bizarre accident involving a newly installed television defaulting to a pre-programmed channel.”
Hilbert investigated the board members’ claims along with the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, but their findings have not ended the probe into Walters, which the Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation continue to carry out.
“In my opinion, the most plausible explanation for what occurred that day is that the television, which had only been in the superintendent’s office for fewer than two months, automatically launched Samsung’s free streaming service and began playing a film that contained explicit content, without anyone in the room realizing it at the time,” Hilbert said. “This information seems to vindicate both the state superintendent as well as the two board members.”
The full-frontal nude scenes the two board members described match those in the 1985 Jackie Chan film “The Protector,” which aired on the streaming channel when the closed-door board meeting took place, according to Hilbert. While denying wrongdoing since the incident late last month, Walters took aim at Carson and Deatherage, accusing them of conspiring against him in a politically-motivated attack that he implied was orchestrated by Gov. Kevin Stitt. Walters has clashed with both the board and Stitt, who rejected a proposal he approved to question students and parents about their immigration status when they enroll in school.
“When I see our NAEP scores not improving, when I see things that are messed up or wrong, or kids being used as political pawns for some political stunt, it’s just frustrating,” Stitt said at a news conference in February.
Because Walters suggested that the board members lied about what they saw on his office TV last month, he could be forced to apologize or subjected to a defamation suit.
“These board members decided to construct a lie to destroy my character,” Walters said after the allegations surfaced. “We will continue to ensure that these board members are held accountable. They should resign immediately in disgrace for the lies that they told.”
Although Hilbert’s findings clear her and Deatherage of making false allegations, Carson said “it does not erase the fact that [Walters] stood before not just Oklahoma — this went worldwide — and . . . called us liars, defamed our characters, basically did a character assassination and thinks he can just walk away from it.”
A retired special education and elementary education teacher, Carson said Walters’ inconsistencies about what happened on July 24 send a bad message to children.
“His story has changed at least five times now,” Carson said. “We’ve gone from [him claiming] it never happened to being able to describe a scene in the movie.”
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