A former teacher at Green Mountain Union High School in Chester has pleaded guilty to possession of child sexual abuse materials and faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced next year.
Norman Merrill II, 46, of Chester entered his guilty plea to the federal charge Tuesday during a video hearing held by U.S. District Court in Burlington. His plea deal with prosecutors calls for Judge Christina Reiss to impose the prison term and a lifetime of supervised release.
The judge could also order restitution to the victims, the 12-page plea agreement stated.
Merrill has been jailed since his arrest in May.
Reiss said during the hearing she was not ready to accept the plea agreement until she had more information about Merrill and the offense he admitted committing. The judge set a sentencing hearing for April 24, 2023, and ordered the federal probation office to conduct a pre-sentence investigation ahead of time.
“Mr. Merrill, I don’t know enough about you and your case to determine whether this is the appropriate sentence,” Reiss said in court. “I want to see the pre-sentence report in advance.”
The judge said the comprehensive report would cover his childhood, criminal history, finances, education, employment, mental and physical health. “Just about everything you can imagine,” Reiss told Merrill.
Merrill was arrested in May after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of producing and possessing child sexual abuse materials.
Chester Police Department officers received a report May 7 of potential voyeurism at Merrill’s home, according to court documents filed in the case. Two days later, Chester police interviewed a child who reported finding a recording device in a bathroom at Merrill’s residence, the documents stated.
The child also told police about witnessing Merrill at Green Mountain Union High School, positioning his phone by his waist as if he was recording images of the young girls who were walking in front of him, according to court records.
Chester police obtained search warrants on May 10 for Merrill’s home and electronic devices and served those warrants the next day, seizing several devices, including “pinhole cameras” and a “spy camera,” the court documents showed.
Vermont State Police found a memory card filled with numerous videos taken in bathrooms, showing unclothed young girls, according to court records.
“The voyeuristic videos appear to have been produced in multiple different bathrooms,” prosecutors wrote in asking the court to keep Merrill in custody. Authorities had not yet identified “all of the bathrooms depicted in the videos” but had associated two of them with houses “frequented” by Merrill, prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Merrill at that time was a language arts teacher at Green Mountain Union High School in Chester.
Lauren Fierman, superintendent of the Two Rivers Supervisory Union, which includes Chester, could not be reached Tuesday for comment.
According to the Chester Telegraph, Merrill taught in middle school for two decades at Green Mountain Union High School, and was fired shortly after his arrest in May.
Under the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed to drop charges against Merrill of production of child sexual abuse material and attempted production of child sexual abuse material.
In 2020, Dean Stearns, former South Royalton School principal, was sentenced to five years in prison for secretly recording teenage girls at his home in Sharon, the Valley News reported.
