A New York City theater teacher has been sentenced to 12 and a half years in prison after he was busted with more than 1,000 images and videos of child sex abuse, some of them involving kids as young as age six.
Besides the trove of child porn, some of which included “abuse and rape of children, infants and toddlers,” Anthony Michael Souza allegedly had sex with an underage teen for more than a year.
He also boasted about “grooming” one of his young students.
All is detailed in a statement issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, dated for Monday.
“New York City parents trusted Anthony Michael Souza to keep their children safe,” said U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton. “Souza betrayed that trust by sharing ghastly child pornography and preying on minors, including his own students.”
The sentence is the result of a plea agreement.
According to the statement:
For three years leading up to his 2024 arrest, SOUZA served as an arts and theater teacher in multiple New York City public schools. His students included children between kindergarten and high school.
During this time, SOUZA sent and received approximately 250 videos and approximately 1,050 images containing child pornography. Some of those videos and images showed abuse and rape of children, infants, and toddlers. SOUZA also took sexualized photographs and videos of young (clothed) children inside his classrooms and sent them to individuals with whom SOUZA shared child pornography.
“Souza, 38, met his victim, then 15, on Grindr and filmed their sexual intercourse and also allegedly hosted a ‘sex party’ in which someone else had sex with an underage teen,” the New York Post reported from court records.
Specifically, Souza worked as a “teaching artist” at the TADA! Youth Theater of NYC from 2022 to 2023, a group that has received more than $4.3 million in contracts with the Department of Education and Department of Cultural Affairs since 2010, independent Post contributor Susan Edelman reported on her Substack.
According to Edelman’s account:
The FBI first learned about Souza, who had no prior criminal record, in April 2024 when it found his texts on the cell phone of a known pedophile. An FBI agent then posed as the pedophile and communicated with Souza, who sent child porn videos, including “explicit material depicting children as young as six years old,” court records state.
Souza was not accused of abusing his students. However, prosecutors said, “Souza and another individual discussed Souza’s unsuccessful attempt to ‘groom’ one of Souza’s fifth-grade students.”
The teacher did not know he was bragging about the attempt to an undercover agent.
“The attempt was foiled when the [minor] hung up the phone and blocked Souza,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s statement.
The teacher did take some videos of his own students and “shared them with his fellow pedophiles,” the Post reported, “including one revolting clip in which he bounced a fully clothed boy on his groin.”
In a letter to Manhattan U.S. Judge Katherine Polk Failla, Souza expressed remorse. He wrote, “I betrayed the standards expected of me, especially as someone who worked with youth. I am immensely sorry for the harm caused by my conduct. The pain for the victims and our society is real and lasting; I accept responsibility for all of it.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times true crime best seller House of Secrets, which documents one of the worst cases of child sex abuse in U.S. history, and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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