A former Riverhead High School teacher and soccer coach was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for soliciting nude images from underage girls and sending them sexually explicit images of himself, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office.
Ryan McCaffery, 38, of Ridge, will also serve five years of post-release supervision, District Attorney Raymond Tierney announced.
McCaffery pleaded guilty Sept. 21 before Acting State Supreme Court Justice Karen M. Wilutis to two counts of first-degree disseminating indecent material to minors as a sexually motivated felony and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
“Adults have a responsibility to protect children, not expose them to sexually explicit material,” Tierney said in a news release announcing the sentence.
According to prosecutors, a forensic examination of McCaffery’s electronic devices revealed that he posed as a teenage boy on Snapchat between December 2024 and January 2025, using the account name c_chambers77 to message multiple underage girls.
He added hundreds of random accounts to contact girls, sent images of his exposed genitals and requested nude images from them, prosecutors said. Investigators also found that he attempted to view and purchase child sexual abuse images and videos and shared at least one such video with another user on the messaging app Kik.
The New York State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received a tip Nov. 4, 2024, from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children about child sexual abuse material shared on Kik, according to the district attorney’s office. State police searched McCaffery’s Ridge home Jan. 17, 2025, and seized several electronic devices.
McCaffery was arrested by state police May 12, 2025, and was subsequently indicted in Suffolk County on child sexual performance and related charges.
He worked as a social studies teacher and junior varsity boys soccer coach at Riverhead High School before resigning Feb. 5, 2025. School officials said after his arrest that the charges were unrelated to his work in the district or interactions with Riverhead students.
McCaffery has also been convicted and sentenced for similar crimes in Bergen County, New Jersey, according to Wednesday’s release. The district attorney’s office did not provide details of that sentence.
He was represented by attorney Elena Fast.
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