A man in handcuffs is standing in front of the camera, haltingly giving a first-person account of the pedophilia case that has shaken Iran for a month: “Four or five students came into my office. … I had some obscene images on my cell phone. … They saw them. … It was mostly a joke. … It only went as far as touching …”

In the background, angry male and female voices rise, expressing condemnation and accusations. The man answers and denies some heavier accusations, such as child rape.

The video, less than a minute long, was published in the Persian-language media back on May 28. A few hours before this video spread, Khabar Online reported on an incident that had taken place in a boys’ high school in western Tehran. According to the report, the handcuffed man in the video was an official at the private high school who “sexually harassed a number of students."

This is not the first child abuse story to be picked up by the Iranian news media. But it is a rarity for the story to be leaked to the press by desperate parents who had feared that the case would be hushed up. One of the parents who talked to Shargh said, “We decided to alert the media so we could have some support. Now, however, it has gotten out of hand and [both the parents and the school administration] wish that media had not gotten so involved in this matter.”