Vice Principal David Alba notified police on May 25 about the discovery of an "online school Dropbox" that showed graphic images of several girls at the high school, according to an affidavit supporting a search warrant.

BURRILLVILLE, R.I. — Police are investigating who has been posting and sharing online sexually explicit photos and videos of more than 40 girls from Burrillville High School.

Vice Principal David Alba notified police on May 25 about the discovery of an "online school Dropbox" that showed graphic images of several girls at the high school, according to an affidavit supporting a search warrant. A boy at the school gave the administration a link to the Dropbox, which was turned over to the police.

Once opened, police discovered 48 individual sub-folders, most labeled with the names or nicknames of different female students — and containing as many as 14 different sexually explicit images or videos of each girl, according to the affidavit by Inspector Michael Bouchard. Most of the girls live or have lived in Burrillville, according to the investigation.

Dropbox is a free online storage service that allows users to share and store files such as photos, documents and videos. Police found that this one was set up anonymously on Feb. 26, just three months earlier.

Detectives questioned at least 42 of the girls last month and discovered that most of them were underage when the photos were taken, even as young as 13, according to the affidavit. Some of the girls had already reported that their images were being actively distributed within the Dropbox platform, as well as other places online, according to the affidavit.

There were three more folders on the site: "Requests," for sharing more graphic content from certain girls; "random" sexually explicit content; and "unknown," which asked other users to identify the images of known female students.

This could lead to felony charges of distribution of child pornography, cyber harassment and child exploitation.

A 2015 Burrillville High School graduate said the sharing of sexual images of female students has been going on for at least two years. The student didn't want to be identified for fear of getting embroiled in the scandal. The school has 725 students.

She told The Journal on Wednesday that girls would send sexually explicit photographs to boys, sometimes their boyfriends. These images are added to a dropbox and the username and password are shared with other boys. When the girls complain, the dropbox gets shut down but it starts up again.

She said no one knows who created the site.

There are many unanswered questions in this investigation:

Who set up the Dropbox? Who had access to it? How many people were using it? Who was sharing the photos and videos in the Dropbox? Were the girls solicited? Were the images being sold?

Police Maj. Dennis Leahey declined comment on Wednesday. The investigation is ongoing.

Alba also declined comment, citing the investigation. "It went over to the police from our hands," he said Wednesday. "I don't want to interfere with the police investigation."

Superintendent Frank Pallotta, School Committee Chairman Mark Brizard and Nicholas Servidio, president of the Burrillville teachers' union, did not respond to calls from The Journal seeking comment Wednesday.

— amilkovi@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7213

On Twitter: @AmandaMilkovits

— lborg@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7823

On Twitter: @lborgprojocom