A FORMER staff member of the US Embassy in Manila has been sentenced to 15 years in prison by a Virginia federal court for illicit sexual conduct with minors in the Philippines.
A statement issued by Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr. of the US Department of Justice and US Attorney Jessica Aber for the Eastern District of Virginia said 63-year old Dean Edward Cheves was sentenced on March 17 after he was found guilty of engaging in sexual acts with a 15-year-old and 16-year-old when he was assigned at the US Embassy in Manila from 2017 to 2021.
The US DOJ, citing court documents, said “from December 2020 to March 2021, Cheves 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, Cheves also engaged in sex acts on two separate occasions with another 16-year-old Philippine minor, whom he met online, it also said.
The US DOJ said Cheves used his government-issued cell phone to film the sex acts on at least one of those occasions.
“The child sex abuse material that Cheves produced was found on the phone after it was seized from Cheves’ embassy residence in the Philippines,” it said, adding that Cheves knew the ages of both minors.
Cheves’ conduct, according to the US DOJ, was investigated by the Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service Office of Special Investigations assisted by the DSS Regional Security Office, Homeland Security Investigations Attaché’s Office in the Philippines, and the Philippine National Police.
The investigation and prosecution of Cheves 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 DOJ.
In an earlier statement, the US DOJ said Cheves was charged with one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place and one count of possessing child pornography in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States or on lands owned or leased by the United States.
In August 2021, Pasay City Regional Trial Court Branch 109 Judge Christian Castaneda issued a warrant of arrest against Cheves for violation of Republic Ac 7610 or Child Abuse Law and RA 9775 or the Anti-Child Pornography Act.
The case was filed by the mother of 16-year-old minor “Jane,” a Grade 10 student in Taguig City.
A resolution issued by the Pasay City Prosecutors Office then said “Jane” admitted to police investigators and social welfare officers that she sends her nude photos online to older men and meets them for sex.
She said she met Cheves on Feb. 12, 2021 in Makati City where she gave the latter oral sex while he was driving. They then met again on February 22 and had sex, with Cheves filming the intercourse without Jane’s consent.
