A former Atlantic City substitute teacher who pleaded guilty in a child pornography case involving a former student had his sentencing postponed Wednesday.
Kayan Frazier faces 15 to 30 years in prison under one count of exploitation of a child, after he created and distributed photos and videos showing the sexual assault of children, including one he met while working in the school district.
Under the plea agreement, if he is sentenced to at least 240 months but no more than 300 months, the U.S. attorney will pursue no other charges against him in connection to the victim named only as Minor Child 1.
Frazier was set to be sentenced Wednesday, but public defender Lisa Lewis requested a 60-day postponement. She told the judge her client was requesting it so he would have time to look over the large amount of documents that has been filed with the court for the sentencing.
But after a meeting with Assistant U.S. Attorney Diana Carrig in the judge's chambers, a date of July 27 was agreed upon.
That is sufficient time for Frazier to review the paperwork, the judge told him.
The case garnered renewed interest last year, after then-Board of Education President John Devlin pushed for an investigation into the circumstances surrounding Frazier’s employment in the district, and his subsequent termination in March 2017.
That investigation is ongoing, with the board recently adding another $50,000 to the already capped $50,000 for the investigating firm. But sources tell BreakingAC that there continues to be pushback behind the scenes, and that many of the charged hours were due to continued attempts to get answers from the district.
Frazier, 28, was a caseworker for the Division of Children and Families when he was arrested in 2019, on child pornography charges.
But he met the victim during his stint as a substitute teacher at Pennsylvania Avenue School in late 2016.
He befriended the boy’s mother in an attempt to be around him outside of school, according to a lawsuit the unnamed woman filed in May.
At that time, Frazier’s cousin, Dr. La’Quetta Small, was principal.
The lawsuit names her and her husband, Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small, as defendants, claiming they knew of the abuse and that at least one incident happened inside their home.
That suit came after the Smalls initiated their own litigation against political foe Craig Callaway for allegations he made about the Smalls’ alleged knowledge of sexual abuse.
It was Dr. Small who first reported that Frazier was having outside contact with the student, violating school policy.
But Small’s timeline of events shows that she waited two months after first learning the boy was sleeping at her cousin’s home before reporting it to Source4Teachers, the company that provides substitutes to the district, BreakingAC previously reported.
Small filed a complaint Feb. 25, 2017, saying she found out Frazier had a third-grader sleep at his home Feb. 12, and then came to the school the next day to take the child back home with him.
Both violate state statute, she noted in her report. At that time, Small suggested Frazier be removed from the school — not the district, which was also an option.
But Small already had quietly removed her cousin from Pennsylvania Avenue School two months earlier.
Emails obtained by BreakingAC via an Open Public Records Act request show that Pennsylvania Avenue School secretary Davinee Brumfield wrote Source4Teachers on Dec. 13, 2016, asking that Frazier be removed from the “long-term floater teacher position,” and notes that he didn’t work in the school that day.
An hour later, Small also sent the company an email saying, “Kayan Frazier is not working at PAS and he is not able to remove himself from the position to accept other openings.”
That email worked to both take Frazier out of his cousin’s school while clearing the way for him to accept positions at other schools within the district.
He continued to work for the district eight more days at four different city schools: Uptown Complex, Sovereign Avenue, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Complex and Texas Avenue.
An investigation by the Division of Child Protection and Permanency found no wrongdoing at the time, and they even hired Frazier as a caseworker after he was fired by Source4Teachers.
Small did not notify police or the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office. That office did receive an email from DCPP saying that they found no wrongdoing.
The government is expected to allow for a lessened sentence for Frazier because he “has clearly demonstrated a recognition and affirmative acceptance of personal responsibility for the offense charged,” Carrig wrote in the plea letter.
