School Banned KCCI Weatherman Year Before Sex Impropriety Claims

WAUKEE, IA — An Iowa school district said it banned part-time television meteorologist Frank Scaglione from its campuses more than a year before allegations surfaced last weekend that he had inappropriate social media contact with boys younger than 18, including some messages that asked them to send photos of their genitals.

Scaglione, 26, of Waukee, is no longer working for KCCI-TV, though the station did not say if he was fired or voluntarily left. Scaglione’s biography page on the station’s website disappeared after the Des Moines Register published a report Monday that included interviews with several underage boys who tweeted Sunday that Scaglione had used social media to pursue sexual relationship with them.

Scaglione has denied the allegations through his attorney, Alfredo Parrish of Des Moines, who said in an emailed statement to the Register that he looks forward to “the opportunity to restore his reputation.”

"These days, the tiniest of slights are responded to with the kind of venom that only the distance and shield of social media offers," Parrish wrote in the statement. "False, defamatory and scurrilous accusations have become weaponized to perfection, ultimately destroying lives and reputations without consequences."

Scaglione is regarded by some in the Des Moines area as something of a wunderkind. He began working at KCCI in 2009, a year before he graduated from Waukee High School, and became known for his humorous weather reports on social media. He founded a couple of marketing companies — the first, Westown Advertising Media in 2008, while he was still in high school, and in 2012, Westown Sports Marketing, whose clients included several area high schools.

Waukee Community School District said Wednesday that it had banned Scaglione from its campuses in January 2017 and severed its business relationship Westown Sports Marketing after learning he “may have engaged in inappropriate conduct with one or more students off school grounds and outside the school day.”

The business relationship with the school district gave Scaglione access to students participating in a district school-to-work program, WHO-TV reported. His company also provided video services to Waukee schools.

Several other school districts told the Register they have either cut ties with Scaglione’s marketing company or are reviewing their contracts.

The Waukee school district said in the statement emailed to parents Wednesday that it had asked the police departments in both Waukee and nearby West Des Moines to investigate last year after the first allegations surfaced. Scaglione was not charged then and is not currently charged with a crime, but both police departments declined to speak with reporters, citing ongoing investigations.

In a letter to Scaglione in January 2017, the Waukee Schools’ assistant superintendent, Kirk Johnson, wrote: "You are hereby no longer welcome on any Waukee Community School campus. If you choose to come to the campus or you are present at any Waukee school activity, you will be asked to leave."

The Register’s initial report quoted a half dozen underage boys, who were not named by the newspaper. Some said it was cool to connect with the genial young weatherman on Snapchat, an app in which messages and images quickly disappear, but the friendships quickly soured. One teen, who is 17, told the Register he and Scaglione connected on social media about two months ago. He blocked him when Scaglione made inappropriate remarks and sent him photos of his genitals.

Several other boys interviewed by the newspaper shared similar stories, saying Scaglione asked personal questions, asked them to come to his house and to send him pictures of his genitals. An 18-year-old who was 16 when he connected with Scaglione on Snapchat told the Register he had a sexual relationship with Scaglione for more than a year.

Scaglione’s Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts all have been deleted. The Register said he had more than 13,200 followers on Twitter.

Scaglione had boasted in a November 2016 interview with the Register that he thought it was “cool that I am reaching these younger, nontraditional consumers.”

"These are kids that would otherwise have no interaction with KCCI,” he said.

In another interview with the newspaper in May 2017, he said he wants “to be a resource to young people — to try to set a good example, be reachable and intractable" in his weather coverage and business relationships.

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