We hadn’t heard much about this year’s Summer Youth Employment Program, aside from the usual issues involving safety for participants on payday. Given the recent history of the program, though, one could be forgiven for assuming that there’d be some kind of negative news to be drudged up. Enter Thomas Nelson.

WJLA reports that Nelson, a 54-year-old SYEP supervisor, has pled guilty on charges that he sexually abused a 17-year-old girl working in the program. Nelson was accused of making inappropriate comments to the girl, touched her and exposed himself in front of her in late June. According to the court, Nelson first asked the girl to come to an empty unlit area, where he grabbed her; later, after sending every other worker to lunch, Nelson grabbed the girl again and exposed his genitalia. Nelson was finally brought in after he texted the girl, saying “this stays between you and me” — at which point, the girl told her mother, who called the police.

At least some of the blame for the incident appears to be being laid at the feet of the city government’s hiring filter — Nelson had previously been incarcerated between 1988 until 2008 for violent, but non-sexual crimes. The SYEP employment application only asks if applicants had been arrested in the last ten years, and does not require any information regarding incarceration.

Nelson will be sentenced on October 21; he faces over three years in prison and a $37,500 fine.