Babysitter live-streamed himself abusing toddler, feds say. He gets decades in prison
A Florida babysitter convicted on a child sexual abuse charge was handed the highest possible prison sentence, federal prosecutors said.
Olejuwan Lamar Steele, 30, was a community babysitter in Dade City, officials said. Steele filmed himself sexually abusing a 2-year-old child in his care in 2022, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.
He live-streamed the abuse while he was babysitting, prosecutors said.
Steele, of Zephyrhills, pleaded guilty in April to production of child sex abuse material, according to prosecutors.
He was sentenced July 22 to 30 years in prison, prosecutors said in a news release.
“This babysitter exploited the innocence of a child in his care, betrayed the trust placed in him, and violated the sanctity of childhood itself,” Micah McCombs, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations Tampa, said in the news release.
Steele’s court-appointed public defender, Douglas Jordan Stamm, declined a request for comment from McClatchy News on July 23 as part of his office’s policy.
‘Routinely accessed children’
In April 2023, Homeland Security agents in Tampa received an emergency tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about a child believed to be in danger in the area, according to court documents.
The organization, a nonprofit created by Congress in 1984, suspected Steele was involved in harming the child, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
The NCMEC provided investigators with videos of a man sexually abusing the child in Dade City, about a 40-mile drive northeast from Tampa, according to the sentencing memorandum. Officials identified the man in the videos as Steele.
Steele was also accused of sexually abusing another child, his nephew who was nonverbal, in 2020 when he was a suspect in a separate NCMEC tip, according to prosecutors.
“Steele was taking advantage of his relationship with family and friends to access small children who could not speak for themselves,” prosecutors wrote in the sentencing memo.
“The evidence in this case show that Steele is a dangerous predator willing and ready to exploit vulnerable children....Steele routinely accessed children, and two videos of his exploitation are now before the court,” the sentencing memo says.
In a sentencing memo filed on Steele’s behalf, Stamm wrote that Steele “was drawn into committing the crime” against the toddler in 2022 “at the request of an anonymous individual online.”
He also said Steele “is deeply remorseful.”
Ahead of sentencing, prosecutors noted that Steele has “positive relationships” with his family members and “has no history of emotional or mental health concerns.”
However, they wrote that “the gravity of the crimes against children that Steele committed cannot be outweighed by his positive history.”
“This video of child pornography is beyond reprehensible, and it is unfathomable how a human being could choose to inflict this type of damage to a child,” the government’s sentencing memo says.
Steele’s prison sentence will be “followed by a lifetime of supervised release,” prosecutors said.
He was ordered to pay the victim $3,000 in restitution and must register as a sex offender, according to prosecutors.
Project Safe Childhood
Steele’s prosecution is a part of a Justice Department initiative called Project Safe Childhood that combats “the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse,” officials said.
The initiative uses federal, state and local resources to rescue child sexual exploitation victims and to find and prosecute suspected perpetrators, according to officials.
Online child sexual exploitation can be reported to the NCMEC’s CyberTipline or by calling 1-800-843-5678, according to the FBI.
The agency and other law enforcement agencies have partnered with the NCME to operate the tip line.
This story was originally published July 23, 2024 at 3:01 PM with the headline "Babysitter live-streamed himself abusing toddler, feds say. He gets decades in prison."
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