By Bruno Matarazzo Jr.
KENT – A former Kent School IT employee accused of accessing students’ private photos and files stored on school computers accepted a plea agreement Monday that includes a fully suspended sentence and registering as a sex offender for 10 years.
Daniel Clery, 49, of Brookfield, pleaded no contest Monday to two charges of first-degree computer crimes and Judge Corinne Klatt entered findings of guilty. Clery worked at Kent School for 23 years until he was fired in 2023, according to prosecutors.
Clery, who was arrested in 2024 by state police and is free on a $25,000 bond, will be sentenced June 29 in state Superior Court in Waterbury. Prosecutors asked for a later date for the sentencing to be able to reach out to 81 identified victims who had their photos and data accessed by Clery, including some international students, for the presentencing investigation report.
Clery in January had been given two options for a plea agreement and opted for the deal that includes a guaranteed, fully suspended 10-year sentence and registering as a sex offender for 10 years.
The second option was 10 years in prison, suspended after three years served and followed by five years’ probation, with the opportunity for his attorney to argue down to a fully suspended sentence. His attorney also could have argued against sex offender registry.
Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Amy Bepko of the Statewide Prosecution Bureau also asked that a “computer access agreement” be a condition of probation.
Bepko explained during the summation of the allegations that Clery accessed photos and videos of staff and students two ways: a cloning software to access personal files, including images and videos, of numerous students, alumni, employees and former employees, and another program to search for photos of specific children in their personal accounts on the school’s servers.
It was also discovered that as a Google administrator, Clery was able to reset passwords and generate backup codes to bypass multifactor authentication, Bepko added. The photos then were copied to accounts belonging to Clery on the school server. It’s not known where the files were then transferred, Bepko said.
Bepko said Clery told state police investigators that he did not share the photos and videos he accessed and that he “had done things that he is not proud of.”
A forensic report commissioned by the private school found that Clery viewed and copied images from student Google accounts, mostly targeting female students, and may have done so for sexual pleasure, according to an attorney for the now former students and staff.
The school’s investigation of the situation found Clery “had been accessing and transferring computer contents of at least 11 female staff members,” as well as 70 current and former students, at least 68 of them female, “over a period of years,” according to a number of lawsuits filed against Kent School.