A former Spartanburg County music teacher has been sentenced to 10 years in prison, with all but 90 days suspended, after pleading guilty to three charges tied to a child exploitation case that began with accusations from one of his own guitar students. John Foster Jr. will serve those 90 days on weekends, spending weekdays on home detention, under terms announced by prosecutors.
According to WYFF, Foster will be allowed to leave home detention only for medical appointments and church. He will also be placed under GPS monitoring and required to register as a sex offender, and prosecutors said a permanent restraining order bars him from contacting the victim for the rest of his life. Earlier reporting from the same station, citing Spartanburg police, had identified Foster as 75 years old at the time of his arrest, while the newer sentencing report lists his age as 78 — a discrepancy the station has not reconciled.
How the Case Against Foster Began
The case traces back to March 2024, when officers opened an investigation on March 20 after a 13-year-old guitar student told her father what had happened, the same WYFF report states. Police said at the time that Foster worked as a music instructor at Roper Music on East Main Street in Spartanburg, and that the girl was one of his students there.
Roper Music addressed Foster's connection to the shop directly, telling WYFF that he rented an instruction room to teach guitar lessons rather than working as an employee. In a statement, the store said, “Roper Music rented an instruction room to Randy Foster to teach guitar lessons to his students. Randy was not an employee of Roper Music; he had a lease agreement to rent space for lessons. As soon as we were notified that Randy had been arrested, we terminated his lease immediately.” The dossier does not clarify why the store's statement refers to him as Randy Foster rather than John Foster Jr., and that name discrepancy remains unresolved.
Charges Piled Up After Initial Arrest
Foster was first arrested in July 2024, after a music student accused him of touching the student's genitals, according to WSPA. The case escalated the following February, when warrants signed on February 19, 2025, added eight additional counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor. Those warrants alleged that Foster possessed sexually explicit photographs of minors along with materials showing minors performing sexual acts, the station reported.
Separate reporting from WSPA noted that Foster had an earlier career in education, having worked as a social studies teacher at Spartanburg High School until his retirement in 2015. That background predates his time teaching guitar lessons and is unrelated to the charges that led to his sentencing.
Broader Pattern of Cases in South Carolina
Foster's sentencing lands amid a string of recent child exploitation cases moving through South Carolina's courts. The U.S. Department of Justice announced in September that Charleston resident Robert W. Nazzaro, 70, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for attempted online coercion and enticement of a minor. Earlier this year, federal prosecutors also indicted a former Columbia teacher on charges involving attempted production, distribution and possession of child sexual abuse material, and a former Rock Hill teacher on separate possession and distribution charges.
Those federal cases were brought by different prosecutors under different statutes than Foster's state-level plea, and none of the underlying details have been independently verified beyond the Justice Department's published summaries. Foster's case was handled through the South Carolina Attorney General's Office, which prosecutors say secured the guilty plea on all three charges.
