Now, an incident report from the Phoenix Police Department reveals new, disturbing details about his alleged crimes — including that school staff found blood test results in his desk that were positive for a sexually transmitted disease.
Phoenix police arrested Chapman on April 16 and he was indicted by a grand jury later that month. Per the incident report, Chapman first landed on police’s radar because Snapchat flagged his “online enticement” activity as he messaged “the profile of a self-identified minor,” which included “sending nudes of himself to that minor’s profile.” Chapman is also accused of filming sexual encounters with students in his classroom at Cortez.
The 43-year-old Chapman taught history and film and TV courses at Cortez for 15 years before he was removed from his position. He pleaded not guilty and will face trial on Jan. 15. He is currently being held in the Lower Buckeye Jail and has not paid his $250,000 bail.
Chapman’s lawyer, Rowland Short, an attorney with the Maricopa County Public Defender’s Office, declined to comment, as did the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting Chapman. In a statement after Chapman’s arrest, the Glendale Union High School District stated the district “took immediate action” and relieved him of “all duties.”
According to the police report, Chapman admitted to his encounters and predilection for underage boys after his arrest. He also admitted to having sexual encounters with at least three students, two at Cortez and one at Washington High School, where Chapman taught for a semester several years ago. One of those students is now an adult college student and told police he’d had sexual interactions with Chapman in his classroom as recently as earlier this year.
Per the report, Chapman told police that he met the students through “adult dating apps” like Grindr and Sniffies but recognized the teenagers as students and knew they were underage. At the time of his arrest, Chapman said he’d had a sexual encounter with one of these students, a 17-year-old junior at Cortez, in the back seat of his car near the student's home as recently as the week prior.
Chapman filmed several of the encounters. Video obtained by police showed Chapman having a sexual encounter in his classroom at Cortez, with a Cortez logo visible on a window in the background. Another video appears to be in an “athletic room or possibly a locker room,” the report said. The names of Chapman’s victims were redacted in the police report, as is common practice when victims are minors.
Chapman said the encounters were consensual and that he felt the students were seeking out sex with adults. However, the age of consent in Arizona is 18 and all three of the student victims were 17 or younger at the time they first interacted with Chapman. According to the police report, Chapman was aware they were underage. When one minor told Chapman via message he was underage, the report says, Chapman replied with “videos and images of a sexual nature” within the next “two to four minutes.”
One of Chapman’s victims, who is now a college student, told police he first had a sexual encounter with Chapman in 2021 at Washington. Their most recent encounter was early this year — during winter break — and took place in Chapman’s classroom at Cortez. During his interview with police, the report says, the student “began to cry” and said he’d blocked details of their encounters “from my head” and worried about having to reveal his abuse to his parents or in court.
“I am a victim,” the report quotes him as saying. “This is so hard.”
‘I know it’s not right’
Chapman told police that he didn’t recall ever telling a student to keep their sexual encounters a secret. However, Chapman said one student — whose name is redacted in the report — once demanded $1,500 to not turn Chapman in to police. It is not clear what happened after that, as the rest of the report’s narrative about that incident is redacted.Chapman also admitted to possessing more than 100 files of child sexual abuse material, some of which depicted boys as young as 7. Prosecutors pulled a sampling of 10 files for charging purposes, seven of which depicted boys whom police estimated to be 10 years old or younger. Police also found an image of several Cortez baseball players stretching, with the camera “focused on (one player’s) buttocks.” Chapman denied ever having any sexual interactions with the players he coached, though he admitted that the photos stimulated him.
The police report also contains supplements from school resource officer Rachel Fernandez. In one, Fernandez wrote that a month before Chapman’s arrest, he “assigned students from his film and TV class to interview” Fernandez about “being an SRO and whether I have investigated a teacher before or arrested a teacher doing something wrong.”
After Chapman’s arrest and indictment, Fernandez wrote in another supplement, an assistant principal found notebooks in Chapman’s desk at Cortez that included “ledgers” with names and dates associated with Chapman’s sexual encounters. The documents also contained “blood results” from a testing facility that showed “positive results for syphilis.” The police report does not say whether it was Chapman’s blood that had been tested.
A second school resource officer wrote that another teacher found concerning items in Chapman’s desk at Cortez, including “several unopened men’s condoms,” “an opened 3-pack of men’s underwear which was missing two pairs” and “a blow-up air mattress within its original packaging."
Chapman has three biological children between the ages of 10 to 14. At the time of his arrest, he and his then-wife were also caring for three foster children, the youngest of whom was seven. Chapman denied to police ever having a sexual interest or acting in a sexual way with the children in his home. Since his arrest, Chapman can only have supervised phone and written correspondence with his children, according to court documents.
After his arrest, Chapman’s wife filed for divorce, which was finalized in late August. When he was questioned by police, Chapman said his wife may have known somewhat about “his interest in males,” but “she doesn’t know to what extent.” When asked how his wife would react to his arrest, Chapman reportedly replied, “Terribly.”
He added that the attraction to boys is “something I’ve always had” and that he knew it was wrong.
“I know it’s not right,” he said, per the report, “but I have come to accept it.”
Do you have information to share about Eric Chapman? Contact the reporter at [email protected] or on Signal at 623-295-9472.
