Former Nickelodeon PA Jason Handy's Crimes Against Minors Are in the Spotlight

‘Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV’ is hard to watch. But now we need to ensure perpetrators like Jason Handy are locked up.

Mar. 21 2024, Published 2:09 p.m. ET

Everyone knows that being a child star isn't cakewalk. It seems like almost every child star comes out the other side with some sort of mental health or substance abuse issue, from Kirsten Dunst to Macaulay Culkin. Now, Investigation Discovery's Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV publicly details some of the actual crimes of Nickelodeon’s adult employees for the first time, including those of production assistant Jason Handy.

Jason started working for Nickelodeon and fellow alleged abuser Dan Schneider in his mid-20s as a production assistant and chaperone for the kids. But the inner workings of his mind were so dark that he was a self-proclaimed pedophile who continued to abuse the minors around him. So where is Jason Handy now?

Where is Jason Handy now? He's in federal prison.

In Quiet on Set, we learn about Jason, who worked as a production assistant for Nickelodeon. His main job was as a handler for the underage actors to keep the parents at a distance so that the creators could do their jobs. Parents described him as charismatic and sociable, saying he gained their trust and kept in touch with their kids via email for “future opportunities.”

At 11 years old, Brandi, who had a small role in The Amanda Show, had an extremely inappropriate interaction with Handy. Brandi’s mom, MJ, detailed what happened in the documentary. She explains that the emails seemed harmless at first, but one time, Brandi was sitting at the computer when she immediately shut it and ran to her room.

MJ went to see what happened and shared, “[The email] was a picture of him naked masturbating, and he said he had sent it to her because he wanted her to see that he was thinking of her.”

Eventually, in 2003, Handy’s crimes caught up to him. Handy started interacting with a 14-year-old Michigan girl with promises of a Hollywood career. He flew out to Michigan to meet the girl, where he did “inappropriate” things to her and invited her to his hotel room, according to the Los Angeles Times.

This led the Michigan police to contact the LAPD, who searched his home and found over 10,000 photos of children, 1,700 child sexual abuse material (CSAM) photos, seven videos, and ziplock bags of “tokens.” They also found his diary, which had entries such as, “I am a pedophile, full blown,” “I really have been giving into my desire for little girls these past few weeks,” and “I even struggle on a day-to-day basis of how I can find a victim to rape if I have to.”

In 2004, Handy was sentenced to six years in prison after two felony convictions, one count of lewd acts on a child and one count of distributing sexually explicit material by email, in addition to a misdemeanor charge related to sexual exploitation of a child. He was released early in 2009 when he then moved to North Carolina and registered as a sex offender.

But in 2014, Handy was arrested on three counts of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of sex offender registry violations. Now, Handy is still serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Petersburg, Va. where he’s set to be released on Aug. 28, 2038.

Report online or in-person sexual abuse of a child or teen by calling the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4453 or visiting childhelp.org. Learn more about the warning signs of child abuse at RAINN.org.

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