Ex-US Embassy employee gets 15 years for illicit sex conduct in Philippines

A former US State Department employee was sentenced for 15 years in prison for illicit sexual conduct with minors in the Philippines, according to a press release posted on the US Department of Justice website.

The 63-year-old Dean Edward Cheves served in the country at the US Embassy from 2017 to 2021.

The US Justice Department said that from December 2020 to March 2021, the former employee "used a messaging application installed on his cell phone to chat with a 15- to 16-year-old Philippine minor, whom he paid to create and send to him sexually explicit images of the minor."

In February 2021, he allegedly engaged in "sex acts on two separate occasions with another 16-year-old Philippine minor, whom he met online."

The investigation, according to the press release posted on March 17, 2023, was conducted by the US Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Office of Special Investigations with assistance from the DSS Regional Security Office, Homeland Security Investigations Attaché’s Office in the Philippines, and the Philippine National Police (PNP).

The case was prosecuted by trial Attorney Gwendelynn Bills of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and Assistant US Attorneys Lauren Pomerantz Halper and Zoe Bedell for the Eastern District of Virginia.

According to the same press release, Cheves also used a government-issued cell phone to film the sex acts on at least one of those occasions and that "sex abuse material" was found on the phone.

Cheves, the press release added, "knew the ages of both minors at the time he engaged in the conduct."

The announcement was made by Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and US Attorney Jessica D. Aber for the Eastern District of Virginia.

The said case is part of the US initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse through the Project Safe Childhood, which was launched in May 2006 by the US Department of Justice.

The project is spearheaded by the US Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, to identify and rescue victims. -- BAP, GMA Integrated News