Ex-staffer of U.S. Embassy in PH gets 15 years for child sexual abuse

Dean Edward Cheves, 63, served at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines from 2017 to 2021.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia – A former U.S. Department of State employee who was posted in the Philippines was sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton to 15 years in prison on March 17, for engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor in a foreign place.

According to court documents, Dean Edward Cheves, 63, served at the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines from 2017 to 2021. From December 2020 to March 2021, Cheves used a messaging application installed on his cell phone to chat with a 15- to 16-year-old minor, whom he paid to create and send to him sexually explicit images of the minor.

Additionally, in February 2021, Cheves engaged in sex acts on two separate occasions with another 16-year-old Filipino minor, whom he met online. Cheves used his government-issued cell phone to film the sex acts on at least one of those occasions.

The child sex abuse material that Cheves produced was found on the phone after it was seized from Cheves’ embassy residence in the Philippines. Cheves knew the ages of both minors at the time he engaged in the conduct.

The U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Office of Special Investigations investigated the case with assistance provided by the DSS Regional Security Office, Homeland Security Investigations Attaché’s Office in the Philippines, and the Philippine National Police.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.