NJ Teacher Admits Posing As Woman To Lure Dozens Of Boys Into Sending Nude Vids, Pics

Steven Brooks, 36, who’d taught fifth grade at Washington Elementary School in Summit and helped run the Livingston Soccer Club for nearly a decade, used other images of child pornography to solicit new material, an FBI complaint says.

One of the videos he received from an underage victim “depicted the minor masturbating,” it says.

FBI agents reported finding other images of child sexual abuse divided into folders with labels such as “Bathing Suits,” “Nude,” “Partying” and “Skin Pictures,” which they said were used to “fully develop” the fake online persona.

Several boys sent Brooks videos that included masturbation, their faces and penises clearly visible, according to the FBI complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Newark.

One boy sent more than three dozen images, including selfies from in front of a bathroom mirror, the complaint says. A separate video shows two minors having intercourse on a bed for more than a half-hour, it says.

Brooks got caught after sending a hard drive to a California company to recover what he listed as “sensitive and private” information, federal agents said.

An employee there noticed several offensive and illegal thumbnail images, then immediately stopped the job and contacted the FBI, they said.

Brooks took a deal from the government, hoping for leniency at sentencing, rather than facing the possible consequences of a trial. 

He admitted during a guilty plea in Newark on Wednesday, April 5, to the “attempted online enticement, production and possession of child pornography involving at least 70 victims,” U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Philip R. Sellinger said.

Sellinger credited special agents and members of the Newark FBI Field Office’s Child Exploitation Human Trafficking Task Force – as well special agents from the FBI’s San Francisco office – with the investigation leading to the guilty plea, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Levin of his National Security Unit in Newark.

U.S. District Judge John Michael Vazquez scheduled sentencing for Sept. 21. Brooks will have to serve out whatever sentence he receives because there's no parole in the federal prison system.

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