WASHINGTON — Parents at an elite Northwest D.C. preschool were met with disturbing news Tuesday when they learned that the man who was in charge of heralding their small children's preschool education had been arrested for child pornography-related charges.
James S. Carroll was head of school at the National Child Research Center in Cleveland Park, where the 55-year-old was in charge of children as young as 2 years old and as old as 5 years old.
Carroll was arrested and charged with attempted coercion and enticement of a minor, according to the Department of Justice on Tuesday.
Carroll had allegedly been using the username "CircumcisedLondonGay#0" to talk about graphic sexual acts involving children and request child porn, according to the FBI agent's affidavit.
Agents were tipped off to the 55-year-old by Discord employees when Carroll allegedly uploaded child porn onto the website's server from that account in September.
"Younger the better," Carroll told the agent on Nov. 5, adding that he only wanted to see pictures of boys, preferably between 8 and 12 years old.
The 55-year-old head of school had also encouraged the FBI agent to sexually abuse a child.
"Carroll directed the undercover officer to abuse his child," DOJ said. Carroll then allegedly went off of the server to the app Telegram to request child pornography from the agent's purported 9-year-old son.
"According to the criminal complaint, between Nov. 5, 2024, and Nov. 14, 2024, Carroll used the Discord messaging application to communicate with an undercover officer as the father of a young child," the Department of Justice said on Tuesday.
Carroll's alleged online sex crimes may have also happened at work as the IP address that agents used to track him down was connected to his office as well as his house. Carroll's D.C. driver's license was also found inside his Discord profile.
After the school administrator's arrest on Tuesday, the website scrubbed Carroll's name and photo from the website. A welcome letter from the 55-year-old spelled out the school's mission of being an inclusive environment for young children, "a center of excellence in early childhood education."
Nestled inside a three-story red-brick building in Cleveland Park, the National Child Research Center is an exclusive and expensive early childhood education. Its tuition for its 2 to 5-year-olds rivals that of a private college at over $40,000 a year.
"The case is being investigated by the FBI's Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force," the DOJ said on Tuesday.