‘Counselor of the Year’ Busted for Child Porn Posed as Teen to Chat With Own Students, Feds Say
A West Virginia educator and onetime Elementary School Counselor of the Year who was indicted on child-pornography charges in December had been communicating with several young children who attended the school where he worked, a federal search warrant obtained by The Daily Beast reveals.
Todd Roatsey, 42, chatted with the kids while posing as a fictitious teenage boy named “CDaily,” according to the warrant. The disturbing new window into Roatsey’s alleged activities answers one of the biggest questions surrounding the charges when they emerged this fall.
“A review of [Roatsey’s] phone… revealed multiple screen recordings of Snapchat conversations with minors, some of whom have been identified by law enforcement as students who attended or were attending Pinch Elementary School, where Roatsey was employed as the school counselor,” the filing states. “These recordings were made starting in January 2020 and proceeding through late summer/early fall of 2020.”
Guidance Counselor Once Honored at White House Is Charged for Child Porn
At least two of the kids, neither of whom has yet been identified by authorities, “sent videos of themselves engaged in sexually explicit conduct at Roatsey’s direction,” the warrant continues. Others—some as young as 11—sent videos “depicting themselves engaged in sexually suggestive conduct that fell short of the requirements for sexually explicit conduct under federal law,” it says.
Roatsey’s devices contained “substantial amounts” of video footage showing children being sexually abused, according to the warrant, which says a folder on Roatsey’s phone labeled “Productivity” contained numerous subfolders within bearing names such as “Child,” “Rape,” and “Rape1.” One of the videos was titled “Teacher fucks girls,” the warrant states. Several others allegedly showed “infants and toddlers” being sexually abused by adults.
One of the email addresses Roatsey used was “costanzag558@gmail.com,” the warrant states, presumably a reference to the George Costanza character on Seinfeld.
John A. Carr, Roatsey’s attorney, declined to comment when reached by phone on Tuesday.
Roatsey, who in 2016 was honored at the White House for his work with children, first appeared on the radar of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents last August. That’s when investigators received a cybertip from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children about a user on the Kik mobile messaging app who had uploaded numerous videos and photos showing “prepubescent and pubescent minors engaged in sexual activity,” a criminal complaint filed in November 2020 states.
HSI agents traced the IP address associated with the uploads back to Roatsey’s home in Elkview, West Virginia, where he lives with his father, according to the complaint. A search of Roatsey’s house turned up the electronic devices on which investigators say they found the abuse videos.
Roatsey was at home when the search was executed, and tried to blame the child pornography on Airbnb guests who had used his WiFi network, the complaint states. However, Roatsey’s personal phone and laptop contained at least seven videos and 26 images deemed child pornography, in addition to “numerous communications” between Roatsey and “girls in the age range of late elementary school through middle school,” according to the complaint.
Roatsey, who was indicted in December on eight additional counts of possessing and producing child porn, received West Virginia’s Elementary School Counselor of the Year Award in 2015 and visited the White House the next year as the state’s national counselor representative.
“It was a black-tie event,” Roatsey told the Charleston Gazette-Mail at the time. “I was very humbled and very honored to be there and to be there on behalf of all of West Virginia.”
Roatsey has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
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