APTOS — An Aptos High School graduate who worked for an after-school program at Mar Vista Elementary School, was taking early childhood education classes at Cabrillo College and held numerous babysitting jobs, was arrested April 27 on charges he was in possession of child pornography, according to federal documents filed by the FBI.
The FBI also stated that Ryan Michael Spencer, 19, admitted to a witness that he sexually abused at least one of the children he babysat.
Spencer has been fired from his position at Mar Vista, where he worked with the After School Childhood Enrichment (ACE) Program, which is managed by the County of Santa Cruz.
Ryan Spencer
Pajaro Valley Unified School District Michelle Rodriguez said Monday that there is no evidence that Spencer victimized the children at Mar Vista. He was set to be arraigned in federal court on Tuesday.
“At this point, we have no reason to believe that any of the allegations against him involve any of the children enrolled in the program or that were in care of district employees,” she said in a statement on the district website.
But Rodriguez said in an interview Monday that Spencer offered his babysitting services to the parents whose children were in the program.
“He did babysit for a lot of parents,” she said.
Rodriguez said that PVUSD officials did not learn about Spencer’s arrest until May 5. It was unclear what caused the delay.
“We take this situation very seriously and will continue to work closely with both the FBI and local agencies as the investigation continues,” Rodriguez said.
Santa Cruz County Parks Director Jeff Gaffney said that county policy dictates that county employees such as Spencer do not work with children unsupervised by a licensed teacher.
“We care deeply about the safety of our children, and while the information we have is limited, we encourage parents who have concerns to reach out to us,” Gaffney said.
On his LinkedIn page, Spencer said he has six years of experience working with kids “from toddlers to teenagers.”
Spencer graduated from Aptos High School in 2016.
According to the documents, an FBI agent interviewed a separate suspect, referred to in the court document as the “witness,” on April 26. The witness admitted to receiving, possessing and distributing images and videos of child pornography.
That witness, who was not named in the document, said he communicated with several people through the internet for that purpose, one of whom was Spencer.
The witness told the FBI that he sent an external hard drive to Spencer, who put “thousands” of images and videos of child pornography on the drive for him. Spencer later picked the suspect up at a bus station and took him to his residence.
Federal agents seized the hard drive at the witness’s residence on April 26.
According to the document, Spencer told the witness that his primary source of income was through babysitting jobs, and that he took pictures of the children when they were naked. Spencer also told the witness that he engaged in “sexually explicit conduct” when he was babysitting them.
The witness also said that he sent pornographic images of children to Spencer on several other occasions.
FBI agents raided Spencer’s residence on April 27, and during an interview Spencer admitted taking naked pictures of the children he babysits, and trading the images.
Agents searching Spencer’s phone found the internet messaging app he allegedly used to trade the images, along with several illegal images and evidence he was trading those images.
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The district will hold a community forum with the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, Santa Cruz County Parks Department and the District on Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Aptos High School Performing Arts Center. For information, call Rodriguez at 786-2135.
