Former Cameron Elementary teacher convicted of soliciting minor

A former music teacher at Cameron Elementary School was convicted Monday of various charges related to soliciting a minor for sex.

A jury in Hanover County, Va. found Ryan Thomas Pick guilty of two counts of Using a Communication System to Procure a Minor for an Unlawful Act and one count of Solicitation of a Minor Under the Age of 15. The jury recommended Pick get seven years in prison; he will be formally sentenced in November, according to a press release from Attorney General Mark Herring’s office.

Herring, whose office assisted the Hanover County Sheriff’s Office in the investigation, called Pick’s case “troubling” and said his office would “continue to seek justice against those who would exploit and harm children like this.”

“Individuals who sexually solicit children are robbing them of their childhood and their innocence, and what is even more troubling is that this man worked with children on a daily basis,” Herring said in a press release.

In addition to his job as a music teacher at Cameron, Pick also taught music at a church and gave private music lessons, according to reports about the case.

Pick, 41, sent a “sexually illicit” video and made “sexual comments” last July to what he thought was a 12-year-old girl on the social networking site Omegle, according Herring’s press release. The girl was actually an undercover officer from the Hanover County Sheriff’s Office.

Officers arrested Pick on August 21, 2018, and Herring’s office said he admitted to communicating with the girl over Omegle. He was put on leave by Fairfax County Public Schools after the arrest, an FCPS spokesman said last year.

A Fairfax County Police spokeswoman said Thursday that detectives found no reason to believe that any community members were in any way involved or directly affected by Pick’s actions.

This story was updated to include information from the Fairfax County Police Department.