Tag: child abuse

Gloucester Police Officer Charged with Child Pornography Offense

A police officer with the Gloucester Police Department has been charged with receipt of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).  

Alexander Aiello, 34, of Gloucester, was charged with one count of receipt of child pornography. Aiello will appear in federal court in Boston at a later date.

According to the charging documents, Aiello is a patrol officer employed with the Gloucester Police Department. It is alleged that Aiello was identified as a user with a registered account for a dark website, which provided a platform for users to download, view, advertise and distribute CSAM. Searches of Aiello’s person and residence on April 28, 2025, resulted in the seizure of the defendant’s cell phone and laptop as well as a USB thumb drive, which was found in Aiello’s nightstand in his bedroom.

It is alleged that a preliminary examination of the devices revealed that a TOR Browser – an application that provides anonymous web access and access to dark web hidden services – was installed and actively running on Aiello’s laptop. It is further alleged that the application had evidence of downloaded files consistent with recent use. Additionally, the preliminary examination allegedly located encrypted folders on the USB drive and laptop computer.

“As a law enforcement officer, Mr. Aiello was entrusted with safeguarding the community – and that includes protecting children from exploitation and abuse. Instead, he allegedly participated in one of the most reprehensible forms of exploitation,” said United States Attorney Leah B. Foley. “This case underscores our unwavering commitment to combating child exploitation in all its forms. Whether the offender is a private citizen or a public official, our mission remains the same: to protect children and pursue justice for victims.”

“As a police officer, Alexander Aiello was sworn to protect and serve, but today, the FBI charged him for receiving images of children being sexually abused,” said James Crowley, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division. “Those who seek out this despicable material are perpetuating the victimization of innocent children. That’s why the FBI Boston’s Child Exploitation – Human Trafficking Task Force diligently pursues these cases. Protecting kids from this physical and emotional trauma is our priority.”

The charge of receipt of child pornography provides for a sentence of at least five years and up to 20 years in prison, at least five years and up to a lifetime of supervised release and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

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Pope Leo XIV ‘looked the other way’ when confronted with child sex abuse allegations against priest in his Chicago church

The newly-elected Pope Leo XIV is facing accusations of ‘looking the other way’ when confronted with child sex abuse allegations against a priests in his Chicago and South American churches, it has emerged.

Robert Prevost, who became the first North American pontiff on Thursday, was accused by a survivors’ group of failing to act upon allegations of abuse in the U.S. and in Peru – concerns they relayed to the cardinals who selected him.

‘Staying silent is a sin. It’s not what God wants us to do. Jesus wants us to stop these things, not make a heathy garden for sexual abuse to grow,’ Lopez de Casas, a victim of clergy abuse and national vice president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), told DailyMail.com.

Prevost was said to have looked past allegations in Chicago, where he grew up, after Augustinian priest Father James Ray was allowed to live at the St. John Stone Friary in Hyde Park despite having been removed from ministering to the public years prior over accusations of abusing minors.

The new pope allegedly didn’t notify the heads of St. Thomas the Apostle Catholic school, an elementary school half a block from the friary because, the church said at the time, Ray was supposed to be closely monitored in the friary.

Prevost also faced criticism for not having opened a formal church investigation into alleged sexual abuse carried out by two priests in the Diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, which he led from 2014 to 2023. 

SNAP and other groups say they had made the 135 eligible cardinals who selected him well aware of Prevost’s alleged inaction on the allegations.

‘This person will be scrutinized from left to right,’ said Lopez de Casas, who hopes Prevost’s election will shine a brighter light on abuse within the Church.

‘That’s helpful for victims everywhere because we have this pope who will be under the public eye in terms of things he was involved with in the past,’ he said.

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Top California Democrats Fight To Protect Purchasing Sex With Kids

Should it be a felony to purchase an underage minor for illegal sex? 

For most of us, the answer is a very easy yes. This is not a hard one. You will likely encounter three dozen questions today or tomorrow that will be considerably more difficult to answer. Generally, if someone is asked if there should be severe legal penalties for underage sex trafficking, the response is an immediate, unhesitating affirmative. 

Democrats in California feel differently. The state assembly there this past week considered a bill — AB-379 — that would have amended state law to make it a felony to solicit paid sex from “any person under 18 years of age.” In other words, if you seek out and pay a minor for sex — if you engage in child sex trafficking — you would be guilty of a felony.

This should have been an easy move for the assembly; the debate should have taken about 30 seconds and ended with a unanimous vote, passage to the state senate, and a quick signature by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The ink should have still been drying on the bill by suppertime on Wednesday. 

Democrats were not so obliging. In fact, they mounted a major opposition to the bill. By the time they were done with it, the bill’s protections for 16-year-old sex crime victims had been stripped from the measure. Democrats added language claiming it was “the intent of the Legislature to adopt the strongest laws to protect 16- and 17-year old victims.” Which is strange since, when given the opportunity to do just that, they refused. 

What reason could Democrats have for opposing the bill? Advocates in no small part seemed concerned that the measure could disproportionately affect … LGBT Californians. (Really stop and think about that for a minute.) The ACLU of Southern California claimed in part that similar measures “have been used disproportionately against … LGBTQ+ individuals.” Other opponents of the bill claimed that the measure could be used by parents who are upset that their children are in “LGBTQ relationships.”

One group claimed there were concerns “about the way that automatic felonies [could be] levied against older teens in relationships with other minors.” State Sen. Scott Wiener, a longtime LGBT booster, argued on social media that “sending an 18 year old high school senior to state prison for offering his 17 year old classmate $20 to fool around isn’t smart criminal justice policy.”

We should all pause for a minute and consider what is being argued here. At best, Democrats and other opponents of this bill are attempting to defend underage prostitution as a normal feature of young relationships (it’s not). At worst, they are revealing, inadvertently, that LGBT individuals are apparently regular participants in the sex trafficking of minors. 

Which one is it? They should probably decide what their position is and stick with it. But it bears repeating that the bill concerns itself only with paying for sex with minors. Any criticism of this bill in the context of the “relationships” it may affect cannot ignore that simple fact. 

Most functioning adults consider it a very bad thing when underage children are paid for sex, no matter the circumstances. Opponents of this bill are acting as if they are defending meaningful, intimate relationships, rather than innately harmful, exploitative, and dangerous ones. “Think of how this will negatively affect 18-year-olds who bribe their underage friends for sex!” is not persuasive.

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Three children ‘rescued’ from home after ‘COVID syndrome’ parents kept them locked inside for 4 years

Three children have allegedly been found living in prison-like conditions following COVID ‘lockdown’ rules, long after pandemic restrictions ended.

A German couple living in Spain have been arrested after allegedly locking their three children inside and forcing them to abide by pandemic restrictions, such as wearing masks, for the past four years.

The siblings, eight-year-old twins and a 10-year-old, were dramatically rescued from the ‘house of horrors’ in Oviedo on Monday (April 28) after being locked up inside since around December 2021.

Once freed, cops noticed the children acted unusually to being outside, as they touched the grass and appeared intrigued by a snail.

An investigator also said: “As soon as we got them out, all three children began to breathe deeply, as if they had never been outside before,” according to New York Post.

The authorities learnt of the children’s situation after a neighbor filed a complaint on April 14 that the youngsters had not been attending school, according to El Comercio.

Yet while Oviedo Police Chief Javier Lozano said there was nothing ‘initially’ that sparked concern, cops grew suspicious after surveillance on the home revealed the 53-year-old father was the only person to leave the residence to pick up groceries and mail.

Other neighbors reported the rest of the family had not left the home since December 2021.

When police approached the family, the father reportedly ‘agreed’ to let them in while they spotted the mom, a 48-year-old German-American woman, putting three masks each on the children, per El Mundo.

It is also reported that she told officers to ‘be careful’ since her children were ‘very sick.’

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REVEALED: How the People’s Pope shielded sexual predators in the clergy – including one priest accused of violently raping nuns

When the world’s cardinals met in Rome last Monday for the first of their crucial pre-conclave discussions, they raised ‘the issue of clerical abuse’, according to a Vatican spokesman. 

The cardinals are forbidden to reveal anything that was said. 

But behind closed doors, the preparations for the conclave – which starts on Wednesday – are already mired in scandal.

Aside from doubts about the true age of Philippe Ouedraogo, a cardinal from Burkina Faso whom some claim is 80, meaning he’s too old to vote, and concerns about the presence of the Peruvian cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani, who faces sexual abuse allegations (which he denies), several cardinals have torn into the legacy of the late Pope Francis.

‘We have listened to many complaints against Francis’s papacy in these days’, one unnamed cardinal told America Magazine, a Jesuit publication.

In any case, we can be certain that Monday’s debate was haunted by a series of jaw-dropping scandals whose details are unknown to the vast majority of the 400,000 Catholics who attended Pope Francis’s funeral a week ago.

If they had known, the crowds would have been much smaller. 

For the common denominator of these scandals – whose victims included 20 Slovenian nuns who claim to have been raped, Argentinian seminarians grotesquely assaulted by their bishop and a Belgian teenager subjected to incestuous assault by his uncle, a bishop – is that Francis went to bizarre lengths either to conceal or excuse these crimes.

The ‘people’s Pope’ was elected in 2013 on a promise to hold the Church accountable for clerical sex abuse. 

And it’s true that he did establish new rules designed to punish bishops found guilty.

But the first Argentinian pontiff did not practise what he preached. 

The darkest mystery of Francis’s 12-year reign was his persistent habit of shielding credibly accused and even convicted sexual predators from justice. 

The Pope enjoys supreme authority over the Catholic Church. 

He can twist or ignore canon law, which is supposed to punish sex offenders, and the Vatican state’s criminal law, without being challenged.

That is precisely what he did, again and again. 

Indeed, his sinister modus operandi predated his election: as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he tried to keep a priest who abused homeless boys out of jail.

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New law requires clergy in Washington to report child abuse

Religious leaders in Washington will be required to report child abuse or neglect, even when it is disclosed in confession, under a new law signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson on Friday.

“Protecting our kids, first, is the most important thing. This bill protects Washingtonians from abuse and harm,” Ferguson said, noting Washington is one of five states in which clergy are not currently mandated reporters.

It took Sen. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, three years to get the bill to the governor’s desk. Making sure disclosures during confidential conversations between a penitent and religious leader were not exempt was critical, she said.

“You never put somebody’s conscience above the protection of a child,” she said.

Senate Bill 5375 passed by margins of 64-31 in the House and 28-20 in the Senate. It takes effect July 27. 

It adds clergy members to the state’s list of individuals legally required to report suspected child abuse to law enforcement or the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Clergy would join school personnel, nurses, social service counselors, psychologists, and many others with a duty to report when they have “reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect.”

A “member of the clergy” is defined in the legislation to cover any regularly licensed, accredited, or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly positioned religious or spiritual leader.

While disclosures in confession or other religious rites where the clergy member is bound to confidentiality are not exempt, religious leaders will retain their privilege to not be compelled to testify in related court cases or criminal proceedings.

More than half the states make clergy mandatory reporters and most exempt what is heard in a confessional. Washington will join several states, including New Hampshire and West Virginia where such conversations are not exempt.

“It says the church is not above the law, especially when it comes to protecting children,” said Mary Dispenza, a founding member of the Catholic Accountability Project and member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. “We know children will be safer as a result of passing this law.”

Removing the confessional privilege proved the most divisive provision in legislative debates. 

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Sick: The Child Prostitution Fight That’s Tearing California Democrats Apart

There’s a mind-blowing battle playing out in Sacramento among the Democrats who dominate California politics.  We told you this week about how these same Democrats quietly killed a bipartisan bill, without debate, that would have implemented the successful reading instruction program that has allowed Mississippi students to overtake California kids in early literacy.  They did so at the furious behest of California’s anti-education, anti-child teachers unions, who are among the deep-pocketed left-wing special interest groups who rule the party that rules the state.  This maneuver even offended the leftist editors of the leftist San Francisco Chronicle, but it’s business as usual in the leftist state.  If that weren’t bad enough, Democrats have chosen to double down on cartoonish evil — and I don’t use that word lightly — by debating over whether purchasing children for sex should be a felony.

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Georgia Former Democrat Congressional Candidate Who Called for Trump’s Assassination ARRESTED in Multi-State Child Sex Trafficking Sting

Carl Sprayberry — a former Democrat candidate for Georgia’s 139th House District — has been arrested as part of a sweeping, multi-agency child sex trafficking operation known as “Operation Lights Out.”

The sting, conducted between April 25 and April 28, resulted in the arrest of 19 suspects accused of attempting to exploit children online, according to WTVM.

Sprayberry, 32, who once ran for state office and publicly called for the assassination of President Donald Trump in a social media post, is among those charged with human trafficking.

In February 2025, Sprayberry tweeted:

“Donald Trump has committed an act of High Treason. Should Congress refuse to take action, he will be killed by the people, as per the Second Amendment’s existence.”

He followed up with another chilling post, implying that a Secret Service agent “should shoot him,” referring to President Trump, and declared, “It’s time to kill Trump.”

Statements like these are not just dangerous—they are criminal. Sprayberry should have been immediately arrested by the Secret Service. How someone openly threatening a President remained free — until now.

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California Democrats Block Bill to Make Sex Trafficking of Minors a Felony — Again

California Democrats in the State Assembly are once again blocking a bill that would make the sex trafficking of minors a felony — this time for victims age 16 and 17 — preferring instead to give prosecutors discretion.

Notably, some of those prosecutors would be George Soros-backed prosecutors who have avoided enforcing the law in the name of “criminal justice reform,” and whom voters have begun to oust across the state.

The blocking effort is the latest chapter in a saga that began in 2023. As Breitbart News reported at the time, Republican State Senator Shannon Grove (R-Bakersfield) had introduced a bill to make sex trafficking of minors a “serious felony.” It passed unanimously in the State Senate, but Democrats on the State Assembly’s Public Safety Committee blocked the bill, since they did not want to increase criminal penalties generally.

Faced with public embarrassment, Democrats struck a deal in 2024 with Grove, under which the bill would advance but only if it was limited to victims under the age of 16. Now, a Democrat, State Assemblymember Maggy Krell (D-Sacramento), is trying to make trafficking minors aged 16 and 17 a felony, too — and fellow Democrats are refusing to allow the bill to advance.

Sacramento-area NBC affiliate KCRA reported Monday:

California lawmakers in the Assembly Public Safety Committee are blocking a proposal that would make it a felony to purchase 16 and 17-year-old children for sex.

Assemblyman Nick Shultz, the Democratic chairman of the committee, confirmed AB 379, a bill to crack down on the consumers of the child sex trafficking industry, will move forward on Tuesday, but without the proposed felony charge.

…

“My perspective as chair, there was a carefully crafted deal last year,” Shultz said. “We’re not saying no, but what we’re saying is if we’re going to be thoughtful policy makers, we really need to dive deep into this issue.”

The proposed bill, even without the provisions that Democrats on the Public Safety Committee are blocking, will roll back some of a bill that Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed in 2022 that prevented police from arresting prostitutes for loitering — a bill that led to an explosion of street prostitution, including child sex trafficking.

The bill recalls efforts by State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) to decriminalize various sex crimes involving minors in their late teens, arguing that these penalize the LGBTQ community disproportionately.

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FBI Arrests Ringleaders of International Sadistic Child Exploitation Network “764” — Nihilistic Extremist Group Linked to Graphic Abuse and Violence Involving Minors

The FBI has arrested two ringleaders of the international child exploitation network known as “764,” a nihilistic violent extremist (NVE) group bent on destroying civilized society.

Leonidas Varagiannis, 21, a U.S. citizen residing in Thessaloniki, Greece, and Prasan Nepal, 20, of North Carolina, face charges for orchestrating a heinous enterprise that targeted vulnerable children as young as 13.

Varagiannis was apprehended in Greece yesterday, while Nepal was arrested on April 22, 2025, in North Carolina, with court hearings pending in Washington, D.C.

If convicted, the defendants will face a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The group operated globally, including in Washington, D.C., using encrypted messaging platforms to coordinate their activities.

The arrests were announced by Interim Attorney Ed Martin, Attorney General Pamela Bondi, and FBI Assistant Directors Steven Jensen and Christopher Raia.

“The allegations in this case are not only disturbing, they are also every parent’s nightmare” said U.S. Attorney Martin. “The number of victims allegedly exploited by these defendants, and the depths of depravity are staggering. Justice demands that our response be swift in order to ensure public safety, hold the wrongdoers accountable, and bring the victims some sense of closure so they can heal.”

“These defendants are accused of orchestrating one of the most heinous online child exploitation enterprises we have ever encountered – a network built on terror, abuse, and the deliberate targeting of children,” said Attorney General Bondi. “We will find those who exploit and abuse children, prosecute them, and dismantle every part of their operation.”

The 764 network allegedly targeted vulnerable minors, often girls with mental health challenges, grooming them to produce and share sexually explicit content and engage in self-harm.

This material was compiled into “Lorebooks,” which were shared within the group’s private channels, such as “764 Inferno,” to gain notoriety and recruit new members.

The affidavit details horrific acts, including coercing victims to cut the names of 764 members into their bodies, set themselves on fire, or harm their pets and siblings.

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