A former Vineland elementary schoolteacher admitted Tuesday to creating child pornography by hiding a camera in restrooms at a theater camp to record underage boys.
Thomas Guzzi Jr., 39, of Pitman, faces a 17-year sentence under the plea agreement, with 10 years of parole ineligibility, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said.
He will have to register as a Megan’s Law offender and will be subjected to lifetime parole supervision. Guzzi is permanently barred from public employment.
Guzzi previously taught fifth grade at Winslow Elementary School and was an adviser and stage manager for youth productions at the school and the Broadway Theatre of Pitman.
He admitted that he captured images and videos of teenage boys urinating in restrooms while they were attending the summer theater camp in Pitman.
Guzzi then used the footage to create a music video of one boy that had images of him urinating edited together with other recordings of him dancing in rehearsals for the summer musical production.
Guzzi also admitted that he took a photo of a boy exposing his genitals while teaching in a summer program at a second school in Vineland.
“Like many child predators, Guzzi sought out positions of trust in which children were placed under his supervision,” Grewal said. “He then callously violated that trust by photographing and videotaping young boys for his sexual gratification, including a vulnerable student at a school where he taught. With this guilty plea, Guzzi is facing justice for so heinously betraying the innocent children who were entrusted to his care.”
He was arrested in 2016 in “Operation Safeguard,” a child pornography sweep conducted by the Attorney General’s Office, Homeland Security Investigations and the New Jersey State Police.
Guzzi had hundreds of files of child pornography on computers seized from his home during a search Feb. 19, 2016.
“Whenever we arrest offenders on child pornography charges, we thoroughly investigate to determine whether there may be hands-on criminal conduct against children,” said Director Veronica Allende of the Division of Criminal Justice. “Guzzi illustrates why we do that. His collection of hundreds of files of child pornography was the tip of an iceberg that also included the stalking and filming of underage teenage boys for his sexual gratification.”
The school district fired him after his arrest, and his teaching license was revoked.
“Child pornography robs children of their innocence and further exploits them when these images are shared online,” said Jeff Kocher, resident agent in charge, Cherry Hill Homeland Security Investigations. “HSI will continue to aggressively pursue these child predators and work as in this case with other law enforcement partners.”
During Operation Safeguard, special agents of Homeland Security Investigations and detectives of the Division of Criminal Justice and New Jersey State Police Digital Technology Investigations Unit monitored online file-sharing networks that are popular with offenders who download and share child pornography. Using advanced technology, the investigators searched for digital “fingerprints” of known child pornography, as well as search terms used by such offenders. Through these and other methods, they identified New Jersey residents who were downloading child pornography and making child pornography available to others in “shared folders” on their computers.
