JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Department of Justice has announced that a former middle-school teacher in St. Augustine has pleaded guilty to attempting a minor to produce sexual abuse content.

Matthew Christopher Yates, the teacher, is charged with "attempting to entice a 14-year-old child to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a video of her own sexual abuse."

At the time of his arrest, Yates was employed as an eighth-grade teacher at Veritas Classical School in St. Augustine.

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According to court documents from the DOJ, an undercover FBI agent in Jacksonville posing online as a 14-year-old child made contact with Yates on Feb. 11, 2022. Yates had been registered on the

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