MAP Forum

A federal judge told a Maumee man convicted of sexually abusing children and distributing child pornography that the 30-year prison term he negotiated with prosecutors kept him from getting more.
“You’re lucky you have this plea agreement, because I’d be looking to stack you in some way so you’d have a life sentence,” U.S. District Judge James R. Knepp II told Jeremy Dean Chesser, a former firefighter and foster father, during a 90-minute sentencing hearing Thursday afternoon.
In an extended address to the court, Chesser apologized repeatedly for his acts and expressed self-loathing while blaming his behavior on several factors. Those included stress from being raped at age 8 and sexually abused thereafter — which he never reported to anyone — and more recently taking refuge in alcohol, pornography, and social media after his marriage began to unravel.
“I truly hate myself. I hate what I’ve done. I have lost everything because of it,” he said.

But Judge Knepp said Chesser had betrayed public trust vested in him as a firefighter and medical responder in both Maumee and Springfield Township as well as his role as a foster parent.
“Society gave you a white hat and a cape — we made you a hero,” the judge said. “...We empowered you with hero status, and you did not live up to that.”
Chesser pleaded guilty in July to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and one count of receipt and distribution of child pornography. He was arrested in August, 2023, weeks after an FBI “online certified employee” in Connecticut began chatting with Chesser, who described sexual activities with children as young as 2 years old.
He also pleaded guilty July 11 to four of 19 charges in a state indictment. The 14 years and four months he is to serve for gross sexual imposition, endangering children, and two counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor are to run concurrent with his federal incarceration.
According to the criminal complaint, the FBI “online certified employee” in Connecticut began chatting with Chesser using the Kik Messenger app on Aug. 7. Chesser identified himself as “Jay” from Michigan and said he had engaged in sexual activities with children as young as 2 years old, court documents said.
In chats with the FBI source, Chesser described in graphic detail his sexual contact with children, provided pornographic images of several teenage girls, said he had solicited nude or pornographic images online from several others, and inquired about the availability of minor children, the complaint stated.
Tracy Tangeman, the lead assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the federal case, told the court Thursday that along with abusing children behind his home’s closed doors, Chesser posed online as a 16-year-old boy and persuaded two former foster daughters to send him sexually suggestive — though not pornographic — photos of themselves.

And Chesser’s cell phone contained many hundreds of images depicting sexually explicit conduct involving minors, investigators reported.
Such victims, Ms. Tangeman said, suffer life sentences of the knowledge graphic images of them exist on the internet, for which they are often identified and harassed by other sexual predators in a variety of ways, including contact with their friends and later their children.
“What I did was wrong — let me not be mistaken,” Chesser told the court before stating that his own abuser had threatened to kill him if he disclosed anything.
That, he said, was the start of a double life where he “showed only my good side” to parents, teachers, and others while “I couldn’t get rid of that sexualized mindset.”
Chesser and his family were featured on a local television station as a model for adoption and fostering, and he maintained Thursday that he truly loved his children.
“They were my everything. I know my actions may contradict that, but it is the absolute truth,” he said. “I’m sorry for all I’ve done. I hate it, I’m not proud of it, I will not boast about it. I regret everything.”
While waiving applicable fines, Judge Knepp ordered Chesser to pay $3,000 in restitution to each of seven identified victims from child pornography he received and distributed, along with a $15,000 fee to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking fund and a $300 special assessment.
“I hope you spend more time thinking of ways to fix yourself, and less about ways to explain yourself,” the judge said after remarking earlier that “it scares the hell out of me” that Chesser could try to excuse any part of what he did.