PORTLAND — A former education technician at Biddeford Middle School, arrested and charged a year ago with possession of child pornography and attempting to send obscene images to a minor, entered a guilty plea to the possession charge. 

Jesse Kiesel, who was 48 when he was arrested in July 2021, entered the guilty plea to possession of child pornography, a federal Class C crime, at U.S. District Court in Portland on Thursday, July 21. He remains free on bail until sentencing; a date has not yet been set. 

A non-binding agreement worked out between Assistant U.S. Attorney Noah Falk and defense counsel John Webb, recommends an 87-month federal sentence.

The maximum prison penalty outlined in court documents, had the case resulted in a trial and conviction on both counts, is 20 years. 

Numerous images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct were recovered from his computer. According to the prosecutor’s version of the case on file at the court, investigators recovered a custom-built desktop computer that was found to contain more than 600 images and video depicting child pornography. Prosecutors said the images and video were received from websites located on the “dark web,” and had been transported using the internet prior to Kiesel possessing them in Maine.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Kiesel engaged in an internet chat and sent an image of his anatomy to an undercover member of law enforcement who was posing as a 13-year-old girl in April 2021. 

According to an affidavit filed with the court by Task Force Officer Ronald Phillips of Homeland Security Investigations, a search warrant executed at Kiesel’s home in May 2021 turned up a computer containing numerous images of child pornography, including photographs of minor girls in various stages of undress. 

In his affidavit, Phillips wrote that Kiesel agreed to a voluntary interview and told investigators he used chat websites to engage in private conversations with juveniles. He allegedly told investigators that children sent explicit images of themselves to him in chats, and when that happened, he ended the conversation. He allegedly admitted to sending an explicit photo of himself to a juvenile “maybe once,” and said he has used online chats since the 1990s and had started chatting with young people about a year ago. He allegedly told the investigator he believed he had an addiction. According to the affidavit, Kiesel told the investigator he never acted on “any of that stuff,” and “never hurt anybody.” 

Biddeford Police Department, Newbury (Massachusetts) Police Department and the United States Marshals Service assisted Homeland Security Investigations in the case. 

The Biddeford School Department placed Kiesel on administrative leave in the spring of 2021, when it learned of the investigation. He tendered his resignation Aug. 11, 2021. 

Kiesel does not have a prior criminal record in Maine, according to a July 12, 2021 Portland Press Herald story.

He had worked at Biddeford Middle School as an education technician since 2017. Superintendent Jeremy Ray in a July 2021 interview said Kiesel had worked at the School Department some years ago, left, and then returned. Ray, in that interview,  verified that Kiesel had  passed the Maine Department of Education’s fingerprinting and background check required prior to joining the School Department.  He said the School Department took  appropriate actions upon learning of the allegations, and cooperated with government agencies, including law enforcement, in their investigation.