Monday, March 29, 2021

High School Janitor Sentenced To 20 Years In Federal Prison For Secretly Filming Students In Girls’ Locker Room

 Jacksonville, Florida – U.S. District Judge Brian J. Davis has sentenced Jason Brian Goff (45, Starke) to 20 years in federal prison for the attempted use of children to produce sexually explicit videos. Goff was also ordered to serve a 10-year term of supervised release and to register as a sex offender. Goff was arrested on September 13, 2019, and has been detained since that date.

Goff had pleaded guilty on September 25, 2020.

According to court documents, in August 2019, two 14-year-old Clay High School students reported seeing what they believed was a camera lens, concealed within a locked gym locker, in the Clay High School girls’ locker room. When school administrators opened the locker, they discovered a cellphone taped to the inside wall of the locker with the lens pointed out of a pre-fabricated hole.

A forensic analysis of the phone revealed a 30-minute video which had been filmed from a window looking into the locker room where female students were captured and recorded changing clothes. At the end of the video, the phone had been panned down to show the identification badge of Clay High School Custodian Jason Goff.

Homeland Security Investigations and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office arrested Goff on September 13, 2019. Goff later admitted that he had tried filming girls in the locker room at least three times, from different vantage points.

Forensic analyses of other electronic devices belonging to Goff revealed additional images from the girls’ high school locker room, and a collection of child exploitation materials, to include a video and images of adults sexually abusing children of various ages, including images of infants. 

“It is beyond reprehensible that this predator used his position of trust as a school employee to sexually exploit children,” said HSI Jacksonville Assistant Special Agent in Charge K. Jim Phillips. “Thanks to HSI special agents and the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, he will be held accountable for his crimes.”

This case was investigated by the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and Homeland Security Investigations, with the full cooperation of the Clay County School Board and Clay High Administrators. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kelly S. Karase.

This is another case brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

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