Kayan Frazier, 29, of Somers Point, also posed as a woman online to solicit similar images from boys, federal authorities said.
Frazier had joined the state Department of Child Protection and Permanency after he was fired as a substitute teacher in an Atlantic City school following an investigation of what authorities said was questionable conduct with male students.
It was unclear how he got the state job, given concerns that district officials had expressed over Frazier having a boy sleep overnight in his bed and texting with a 9-year-old student after school.
Detectives with the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office began investigating after Tumblr alerted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to child porn posted over a period of several weeks.
The investigators found the underage boy in the images in his company during a raid of Frazier's apartment in April 2019, an FBI complaint on file in U.S. District Court in Camden says.
The boy’s mother told investigators she was unaware of what went on between the two, it says.
Before they were finished, investigators had retrieved thousands of images of child sexual abuse on Frazier’s cellphone and other devices – including shots of the boy in the apartment, Acting U.S. Attorney Rachel A. Honig said.
Rather than go to trial, Frazier took a deal from the government, pleading guilty in federal court in February to one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
Unlike the state, there’s no parole in the federal prison system, so Frazier will have to serve nearly the entire term of 20 years and eight months.
U.S. District Judge Joseph H. Rodriguez in Camden also sentenced Frazier to lifetime parole supervision, with restitution to be determined later.
Frazier will be transferred from the Atlantic County Justice Facility, where he’s remained since the 2019 raid, to a federal prison.
Honig credited special agents of FBI, the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office, the Atlantic County Sheriff’s Office, New Jersey State Police and New Jersey Human Services Police with the plea and sentence, secured by Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Vondra Carrig of her Criminal Division in Camden.
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