UCLA Professor Held in Porn Case

Simi Valley police arrested a UCLA classics professor Thursday for allegedly sending pornographic material through the Internet to a detective posing as a 13-year-old girl.

Andrew Dyck, 56, surrendered to police about 1 p.m. after being told of the case against him, Sgt. Paul Fitzpatrick said. Dyck was booked on suspicion of multiple counts of sending harmful matter to a minor and was taken to Ventura County Main Jail in Ventura.

Fitzpatrick said the investigation started after the girl went to the Simi Valley police headquarters with her parents and told detectives about material she had been receiving over the Internet.

Det. David Del Marto “reviewed the e-mails and initiated contact with the suspect, posing as the girl,” Fitzpatrick said. Over the next four months, Del Marto, assisted by the Southern California High Technology Task force, determined that the e-mails were coming from UCLA, Fitzpatrick said.

With the assistance of campus police, the suspect was identified as Dyck, a professor of Latin, Greek and philosophy.

Dyck received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1975 and joined the UCLA faculty as an assistant professor in 1978. He was named a full professor of the UCLA classics department in 1988 and served as department chair from 1988 until 1991.

In July, police obtained a warrant to search Dyck’s UCLA office and seized his computer. Working with the task force, Simi Valley police were able to retrieve pornographic material and related e-mails from the computer, Fitzpatrick said.

Last week, a former professor at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo was arrested on two felony charges of possessing child pornography on his university computer.

FBI agents arrested Safwat Moustafa, 63, former chairman of the department of mechanical engineering. The investigation began after a university technician repairing Moustafa’s laptop found more than 10 images of child pornography, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Rod Castro-Silva.