KC area teacher was ‘somebody you could talk to.’ Then he was arrested for child porn
The first time Shaelyn Dove stepped onto the stage, she thought she might have found a home.
Dove joined the theater program “on a whim” after transferring to Truman High School in Independence her junior year. As she enrolled in drama courses and auditioned for musicals, she also found a new favorite teacher in Austin Meyer, who took over the department around the same time she joined and led lively theater warm-ups in his classroom.
A few years later, she was shocked to see Meyer’s name disgraced in headlines after he was arrested on charges related to child pornography.
“I was in the car with my mom,” Dove, now 19, said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, no way,’ and I started freaking out… My mom knew how much that Mr. Meyer meant to me, and it was just shocking and heartbreaking.”
As her mother drove and she read, Dove said she felt rising unease about her relationship with her former teacher.
“What he was watching and reading, that was truly disgusting,” Dove said. “It made me feel grossed out that I ever wanted his attention.”
Independence police arrested Meyer, 31, earlier this spring after finding more than 11 gigabytes of child pornography on his work computer, according to court records.
Meyer was charged the following day in Jackson County court with 11 counts of possessing child sexual abuse material and was subsequently placed on administrative leave. The videos found on his computer portrayed children as young as 8 and included portrayals of bestiality, according to court documents.
“(The news) was everywhere,” said Anastasia Flanagan, 17, who graduated from Truman in December. “My friends were posting his mug shot and saying, ‘Oh, boy.’ It just felt so unreal.”
The videos found on Meyer’s computer are not believed to have involved Independence School District students or Meyer’s own child, according to the school district.
Meyer, who lives in Liberty, was also previously affiliated with both Kansas City Young Audiences and The Coterie Theater as a teaching artist.
He pleaded not guilty to all charges and was released from the Jackson County Detention Center in April after posting 10% of his $100,000 bond.
Two of the students who crossed paths with Meyer at Truman High School spoke with The Star about what it was like to find out that their teacher had been arrested and about their experiences in his classroom.
Both said that Meyer was known to play favorites in his classes and show special attention to some students over others, which one described as a source of consistent distress.
“It was entirely unfair and also just not really the most healthy environment for high schoolers,” Flanagan said.
The other student said Meyer created an informal environment in his classroom that felt liberating to her at the time, but raised some concerns when she reflected on it after leaving the school.
“He made personal relationships with all of his students,” said Dove. “He was very involved, and he knew things. He felt like somebody you could talk to, which is why it was so shocking.”
Neither ever personally witnessed Meyer making physical contact with a student, they said.
The Independence School District ignored multiple requests for comment in the weeks following Meyer’s arrest and declined to speak on any changes to its digital security or hiring practices in the months since.
Andrew Russek, an attorney representing Meyer, denied all of the charges against his client, as well as any and all allegations of classroom misconduct on Meyer’s part.
Classroom conversations
Meyer joined the Truman theater program in 2022.
Flanagan said he was often sarcastic with students in class, which she described as “off-putting.”
Dove described his classroom management style as casual, with a lot of time spent playing games and having side conversations, which she said was appealing to her at 16.
Students felt free to be themselves in Meyer’s class, Dove said. They came in and out of class as they pleased and had extended chats next to his desk.
That familiarity sometimes extended beyond topics students and other teachers would typically discuss, Dove and Flanagan said. Both students said that Meyer would comment on students’ romantic lives and suggest that certain students should date.
Dove said that some students felt comfortable enough to talk about sexual activity and drug use in front of Meyer. He neither discouraged nor joined these discussions, she said, but sometimes he would laugh, according to Dove.
“He would say something without saying something,” Dove said.
At the time, those conversations felt good, Dove said. Now on the other side, she said she feels uncomfortable with the way Meyer interacted with students.
“It was weird, but it didn’t feel weird,” Dove said. “I just felt like I wanted, needed, somebody to talk to, and he was there.”
Flanagan and Dove both said that the students Meyer treated preferentially were typically younger, smaller, female and white. As a student, this made Dove — who is Black — fight harder for Meyer’s favor at times, she said.
“I think the messed up part is that since he had favorites, I almost wanted his attention,” Dove said. “It felt good when he would talk to me. I wanted that.”
Backstage issues
While not directly related to the criminal charges, both students had concerns with how Meyer managed the school’s theater program.
The first show Meyer directed was “High School Musical” in 2022. For Dove, daily rehearsals were a reprieve from a difficult situation at home.
“The space that Mr. Meyer gave me, I really needed,” Dove said. She and Anastasia both played ensemble roles in several other productions, including “The Crucible” and “Little Women.”
But Meyer “had a temper,” Dove said, especially as performances drew near. He hurled expletives at cast members on at least one occasion, Dove said, later writing off the outburst as “show business.”
Flanagan said that several of her peers left the department after their first year working under Meyer. She also said she felt like Meyer did not take an experience she had being harassed by another student during a production seriously.
As “High School Musical” rehearsed, Flanagan says she was on the receiving end of unwanted romantic attention from a classmate. As the advances escalated, Flanagan went to Meyer. She said he told her he would address the other student and keep the two apart.
“He said he would take care of it right away, but it wasn’t taken care of,” Flanagan said. “He kept her in the cast, which made me not want to go to rehearsals a lot of the time, and made me not feel safe.”
Difficult conversations
Truman administrators first contacted Independence police about Meyer after school IT employees learned that his work computer had gotten a virus. The malware notification prompted the employees to search Meyer’s computer, where they discovered the images of child sexual abuse, according to court documents.
Both Dove and Flanagan recalled that Meyer was particularly protective of his computer and his notebook.
His anger when students “touched his stuff” was memorable, Dove said, because it was so at odds with his otherwise lax manner.
“He didn’t care about most stuff we did,” Dove said. “But once we touched his computer or once we touched his notebook, then he would want to be, like, serious teacher mode.”
When Meyer was arrested, news traveled fast through Anastasia’s circles, she said.
“A lot of people knew right away,” Anastasia said. “...There were so many different reactions. There was fear. There was, ‘Oh, what if there’s another teacher like that?’”
A second Independence School District employee, 38-year-old bus driver Christopher Omenski, was also charged with child sex crimes several weeks later. Omenski was detained after a traffic stop and charged with six felonies, including including statutory rape, statutory sodomy and possession of child pornography.
For Stephanie Flanagan, Anastasia Flanagan’s mother, Meyer’s arrest prompted a challenging conversation at home. Though she was aware of the issues her daughter had experienced in Meyer’s class, Stephanie Flanagan said, she was surprised to hear the particulars of the child sexual abuse material found on his computer.
“To know that [students] were placed in his care was just so upsetting for so many people,” she said. “The things these kids lost and endured over these last three school years is just abominable.”
Truman thespians rebuild
Aaron Wilson, vice president at the City Theatre of Independence, took over as a long-term substitute theater teacher at Truman through the end of the 2025-2026 school year following Meyer’s arrest.
Shortly after he began, Wilson told Stephanie Flanagan that the school’s theater program had lost its status with the International Thespian Society, an honorary organization for middle and high school students.
Eligible students were re-inducted into the Thespian Society on May 1. Wilson was also able to submit student performances for the Starlight Theatre’s Blue Star Awards.
Also in May, a one-act version of meta-comedy “The Play That Goes Wrong” opened at Truman, directed by speech teacher Noah Graham and assistant directed by Wilson.
A Jackson County judge ordered warrants for both Meyer’s laptop and a flash drive in late May, and a jury trial has been scheduled for September 22, according to court records.
Dove said that if she could, she would warn her younger self to be more careful about adults who both offered and withheld validation so readily. She said she spent a lot of time after Meyer’s arrest processing her experiences with two friends from his class who were also grappling with similar experiences and feelings.
Dove said she felt that her casual relationship with Meyer made her write off behaviors that now seem like clues to his misconduct.
“I think that’s what it was,” Dove said. “I wanted him to validate me so bad. I wanted him to tell me that I was doing good, like he told other people that they were doing good.”
This story was originally published July 9, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
