Sex With Minors Overseas Lands Ex Lower Merion Teacher Prison Time

LOWER MERION TOWNSHIP, PA — A former Lower Merion School District special education teacher was sentenced to prison for traveling to the Philippines to engage in sex with children as young as 12 years old.

Craig Alex Levin, 67, of King of Prussia, was sentenced to 35 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release.

Levin worked at Lower Merion and Harriton high schools until 2007.

According to court documents, between 2016 and 2019, Levin traveled to the Philippines nine times.

Each visit was to have sex with disadvantaged minors who, by Levin’s own words, were hungry or needed money for medicine for family members.

In May 2019, the Philippines National Police arrested Levin as he was about to enter the elevator at his hotel with a 15-year-old girl.

He deported back to the United States in August 2020 and has been held in federal detention since.

Upon search of his hotel room, police located several notebooks containing the names and ages of hundreds of girls, scored on a rating system of 1 to 10 in five categories: Face, Body, Sex, Personality, Age.

Only girls under the age of 18 received a top score of 10.

There were multiple children as young as 12 listed in the notebooks.

"At the time of Levin's arrest in the Philippines, he was escorting a 15-year-old girl to his hotel room. Levin's sentencing effectively takes a dangerous predator who targeted vulnerable children in a foreign country off the streets indefinitely," United States Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said. "No matter their role in society or where they prey on children, child sex offenders must be held accountable."