Convicted Hollywood sex offender faces new charges

A man who was convicted of sexual abuse in California a decade ago is facing new charges in North Carolina.

Sheriff’s deputies for Guilford County, N.C., arrested Jason Michael Handy, 40, on Tuesday on three counts of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of sex offender registry violations, according to a news release. Handy is being held on $1 million bail.

Handy was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 after pleading no contest to two felony counts, one of lewd acts on a child and one of distributing sexually explicit material by email, and to a misdemeanor charge related to child sexual exploitation.

In California, he was a production assistant at Nickelodeon and volunteered at a Malibu church. After his release in 2009, he moved to North Carolina, where he registered as a sex offender.

As reported in a 2012 Los Angeles Times article on sexual abuse in the entertainment industry, Handy used the hopes of at least two girls who dreamed of careers in TV to sexually exploit them. The case in part prompted Nickelodeon to toughen its background checks for all employees.

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