PHILADELPHIA – United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero announced that Robert Dean Caesar, 60, of Oxford, PA, was sentenced to 100 years in prison and lifetime supervised release United States District Court Judge Gerald Pappert for multiple child exploitation offenses including producing, transmitting, and collecting child pornography.
In April 2022, the defendant pleaded guilty to those child pornography charges detailed in a 2018 Indictment. According to court documents, beginning in 2017, the defendant hired two teenage brothers, then ages 14 and 15, from the Pennsylvania Dutch (or Amish) to perform yard work and other odd jobs at Caesar’s residence in Chester County. During this time, the defendant sexually abused both boys on numerous occasions, and also used a cell phone to take sexually explicit photos of one of them. After the boys disclosed the abuse, a search warrant executed at the defendant’s residence revealed a massive collection of child pornography, amounting to tens of thousands of images and videos, as well as the sexually explicit images he produced of his minor victim during the abuse. The investigation further revealed that Caesar had been assaulting young boys for decades, dating back to the 1980’s.
“This defendant committed unspeakable, horrific acts, abusing unknown numbers of children until he got to these two victims, these brothers, and destroyed their entire lives,” said U.S. Attorney Romero. “And for that he will now spend the rest of his life behind bars. It is our duty to protect the most vulnerable members of society, and together with our law enforcement partners we will continue to uphold that duty by bringing to justice anybody who preys upon minor children.”
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.