Former child protection caseworker pleads guilty in child pornography case
(The AEGIS Alliance) – A former caseworker for New Jersey’s child protection agency pleaded guilty to producing child pornography, federal authorities announced.
On Thursday, 28-year-old Kayan Frazier admitted by way of video conference in federal courtroom to at least one count of child sexual exploitation, according to Acting U.S. Attorney Rachael A. Honig in an announcement. Frazier has been in custody since he was arrested in July 2019.
The crime took place between March 2017 and April 2019 and involved an underage boy, the charging document reveals. It says that Frazier “did knowingly employ, use, persuade, induce, entice or coerce” the victim to “engage in sexually explicit conduct.”
Authorities started investigating after they obtained a report that child sexual abuse photos had been being distributed on Tumblr. Law enforcement recognized the sender as Frazier, who at that time was a caseworker for New Jersey’s Department of Child Protection and Permanency.
In April 2019, prosecutors in Atlantic County executed a search warrant on Frazier’s Somers Point residence. Authorities discovered him “in the company of an underage boy,” the announcement reads.
“Law enforcement officers recovered thousands of additional images of child sexual abuse on Frazier’s cellular telephone and other electronic media, which included images of the boy taken in Frazier’s apartment.
Frazier admitted that he took the images with a cellular telephone,” the attorney’s office stated.
Frazier’s lawyer, Lisa Lewis, mentioned, “My office has a no-comment policy on all matters.”
He faces a maximum 30-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. Frazier’s sentencing is scheduled for June 8.
Additionally, Frazier was charged by Atlantic County prosecutors with distributing child pornography and possession of child pornography, each second-degree offenses. County prosecutor Damon Tyner stated an investigation uncovered “more than 1,000 images depicting sexual exploitation or abuse of a child.”
An FBI special agent wrote a complaint in 2019 that said Frazier was fired from his job as a substitute teacher after he was accused of letting a young male student “visit his home and sleep in his bed.” He was accused of texting a 9-year-old student after school hours.
Frazier denied any inappropriate conduct with the first student and mentioned he was the boy’s mentor, the complaint stated. It also says he acknowledged texting the 9-year-old boy.
The complaint also alleges that Frazier threatened to harm the boy victim’s family if he didn’t comply with his sexual advances or if he informed anybody.
Frazier was fired from his education job in March 2017 and started working as a caseworker six months later, NJ.com reported. A spokesperson for the Department of Children and Families informed NJ.com that the agency couldn’t talk about specific investigations because of confidentiality laws, however, that every one of the workers is subject to background checks and screenings for abuse cases.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
