Gerhold was then summoned to the administration offices and placed on leave.Īccording to state records, he then went to his classroom and visited with the school’s head pastor, who was also a board member at the school. Shortly after Gerhold reported the alleged blackmail attempt, information about him – including photos of some kind - was posted to the school’s Facebook page. In January of this year, Gerhold contacted his superiors to report that his phone had been hacked and someone was attempting to blackmail him by threatening to share information about his sexuality with his friends, family and employer. The school hired him, the judge found, on the condition that he refrain from sharing information about his sexual orientation with students, and that he refrain from dating while employed at the school.
The Lutheran school believed his “sexuality needed to be kept a secret,” according to a judge who recently presided over a public hearing on Gerhold’s request for unemployment benefits. According to state records, he informed school officials at that time that he was gay. Matthew Gerhold was hired by Valley Lutheran High School in Cedar Valley last summer as the school’s music teacher.
A gay music teacher was forced to resign from a Lutheran school in Iowa earlier this year after someone hacked his phone and posted personal information about him to Facebook.
