A former state Department of Children and Families caseworker is accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a teenage girl who was under the supervision of the department and state police have arrested him.
The DCF worker, 40-year-old Eliezer Rijos, of Watertown, resigned after the allegations surfaced. He has been charged with risk of injury to a child and tampering with physical evidence, state police said.
State police said he was arrested after an investigation into alleged interactions during the summer of 2022 with a teenage girl who was under the supervision of DCF while Rijos was employed by the department.
State police started investigating on Aug. 29 when Wolcott police reached out to them about allegations of an inappropriate relationship between Rijos and a 15-year-old.
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They said he had been using his personal and state-issued phones to text the teen, possibly while he was at work, and the texts were sexually charged.
The warrant states that the messages included photos of Rijos’ genitalia as well as sexual videos.
It also says the messages included, “if you were my age, I would date you,” Don’t dress sexy please Because then ima ask to bring you back home lol,” “Lol don’t worry I won’t bite hard,” as well as others.
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The teen told investigators that Rijos became “flirty” while he was her aide, but the inappropriate texting happened after Rijos was her aide.
Rijos resigned from DCF employment in August 2023 and state police said he has not had communication with the juvenile since 2022.
Rijos told state police that the teen had started texting him and he didn’t remember the content of the texts until DCF showed him pictures of them the day he resigned.
He said he didn’t send the teen any pictures or photos of himself and that he would never “push that boundary” by taking it as far as anything physical with her, according to the warrant.
Rijos also told investigators that he deleted “everything” from both phones after the texting stopped because he knew it was wrong and he and the teen never talked after that, the arrest warrant states.
Rijos turned himself in on Tuesday morning after learning of a warrant for his arrest.
He was held on a $150,000 court-set bond pending his arraignment, whcih is scheduled for Wednesday at Waterbury Superior Court.
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