Tag: child abuse

Prosecutors say Republican South Carolina lawmaker used ‘joebidennnn69’ to send child sex material

A Republican member of the South Carolina House who prosecutors say used the screen name “joebidennnn69” has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.

RJ May was arrested at his Lexington County home after a lengthy investigation and was ordered Thursday by a federal judge to remain jailed until his trial.

The three-term Republican is accused of using “joebidennnn69” to exchange 220 different files of toddlers and young children involved in sex acts on the Kik social media network for about five days in spring 2024, according to court documents that graphically detailed the videos.

Each charge carries a five-to-20 year prison sentence upon conviction and prosecutors suggested May could spend over a decade in prison if found guilty.

The files were uploaded and downloaded using May’s home Wi-Fi network and his cellphone, prosecutors said. Some were hidden by the use of a private network but others were directly linked to his internet addresses.

May says someone else could have used his Wi-Fi

At his arraignment, May’s lawyer suggested someone could have used the Wi-Fi password that was shown on a board behind a photo May’s wife may have posted online. Attorney Dayne Phillips also suggested investigators didn’t link each Kik message directly to May.

Prosecutors asked that May, 38, not be given bail because he lives at home with his wife and young children, and some of the files he is accused of sharing feature children of about the same age as his.

May investigated for paid sex in Colombia

Prosecutors said they also investigated whether May used a fake name to travel to Colombia three times after finding videos on his laptop of him allegedly having sex with three women. An agent from the Department of Homeland Security testified the women appeared to be underage and were paid. U.S. agents have not been able to locate the women.

Prosecutors said May created a Facebook account with his fake name and his internet history showed him switching between his real account and the fake one and even searching his primary opponent from the fake login.

Phillips, May’s lawyer, told the courtroom that no sexual images of toddlers or young children were found directly on his laptop or cellphone.

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Leading rabbi accused of sexually assaulting young girls

Several young women accuse a leading rabbi of repeatedly sexually assaulting them and others in interviews with Channel 12.

The women describe how Rabbi Haim Yosef Abergel, A prominent Sephardic rabbi from the southern city of Netivot, repeatedly molested them in recent years, with some of them as young as 12 when the assaults started.

The young women describe how aides to the rabbi tried to silence them and their families with threats and bribes.

One of the women, who spoke on camera but was not identified, filed a complaint with police this morning. Channel 12 says police are likely to launch a formal investigation.

A lawyer for Abergel denied the accusations, calling them completely false and a blood libel.

Abergel made headlines recently with reports he was planning on establishing a new Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party to compete with Shas.

Abergel is the son of the late Rabbi Yoram Abergel, a popular rabbi who himself split with Shas in 2015. In 2013, the senior Abergel was arrested on suspicion of extortion in connection with threats against a mayoral candidate in Netivot, but the charges were dropped for lack of evidence.

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FBI: Hundreds of Alleged Child Predators Arrested in Texas

A monthlong investigation in Texas snared 244 alleged online child-sex predators, the FBI and other agencies announced at a June 10 news conference in Dallas.

“We’re taking them off the street and not stopping,” FBI Director Kash Patel wrote in a social media post.

The FBI Dallas office’s special agent in charge, R. Joseph Rothrock, told reporters that a common goal united more than 70 federal, state, and local agencies: “to rescue children from abuse and exploitation.”

This marks the second month in a row that the FBI has announced large-scale arrests of alleged online predators. Such cases are considered high priority for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, Patel said last month, as he announced that 205 suspects were arrested in a nationwide sweep called Operation Restore Justice.

The Texas-based investigation, dubbed Operation Soteria Shield, “rescued 109 children” and gathered “terabytes of illicit data,” the FBI said, adding that electronic devices are being further analyzed. The new evidence could lead to additional arrests or identifying victims.

Officials did not disclose details of the charges. However, at the news conference, they displayed names and photographs of the defendants. Silhouettes served as placeholders for 22 suspects for whom photographs were unavailable; some were juveniles and at least one remained unnamed pending arrest.

The effort demonstrates the agency’s commitment “to relentlessly pursue those who prey on children and to ensure that survivors are no longer silenced or hiding in the shadows,” FBI Dallas said.

It welcomed remarks from Texas police chiefs whose departments participated in the operation.

Dallas Police Chief Daniel C. Comeaux said the operation, which began in April, marshaled “a massive team effort.” His department serves as the lead agency for the North Texas Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

Wylie Police Chief Anthony Henderson said: “The trauma inflicted by these crimes runs deep, affecting not only the victims, but also their families and entire communities.”

“With every arrest made and every child protected, the operation moves us closer to a safer community,” Henderson said.

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Former Hopkinton deputy police chief convicted of child rape while school resource officer

Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan announced Friday that a Middlesex Jury has convicted former Hopkinton Deputy Chief of Police, John “Jay” Porter, of three charges of Rape of a Child. The assault on the student occurred while he was assigned as a school resource officer in the Town of Hopkinton school system.

The incidents occurred during 2004 and 2005 while the victim was a 15-year-old student. During that time Porter assaulted the victim on multiple occasions off school property.

“The defendant in this case abused his position of power to take advantage of and manipulate a child to gain her trust before sexually assaulting her on multiple occasions,” said District Attorney Marian Ryan.

This investigation was conducted by the District Attorney’s Office and the Massachusetts State Police. The prosecutor assigned was Assistant District Attorney Maren Schrader and Victim Witness Advocate was Meaghan McCarthy.

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Former KPD officer gets 25-year prison sentence in pay-for-porn child materials case

Noting what he did was “appalling,” a federal judge Thursday sentenced a former Knoxville police officer to 25 years in prison for conspiring to get and receiving more than 40 sexually explicit images of a child starting when she was 6 years old.

Dan Roark, 48, will be 73 when he gets out of prison. After that, he faces the rest of his life on supervised released.

U.S. District Court Judge Katherine A. Crytzer accepted a specific sentencing agreement reached by defense attorneys and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kolman that called for a punishment range of 262 months to 300 months.

Crytzer chose the top of the range, which amounts to 25 years. Roark cried quietly at one point during the sentencing hearing and declined a chance to speak on his own behalf.

He is represented by Gregory P. Isaacs and Ashlee Mathis of the Isaacs Law Firm.

Roark is seeking imprisonment at a federal facility in Kentucky.

Starting in 2019, Roark received explicit images of the Virginia child from her mother. Roark paid for images, the investigation showed.

Crytzer noted the investigation showed he got at least 41 pornographic images.

Roark, a KPD officer 16 years, disguised his identity to the mother, altering his name and claiming falsely that he was a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer, Kolman said.

To the child, he was “Daddy Dan,” Kolman said. He also listed a fake address in Knoxville from which he sent money to the mother in Virginia.

KPD fired Roark in 2023 after learning of the accusations against him.

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The Sexual Abuse Scandal That’s Engulfed the Evangelical Movement

Whenever Missouri megapreacher Mike Bickle received prophecies from God, he tended to shout the good news from the rooftops. But there was one recurring vision that he only shared with a few people. In the early 1980s, Bickle—who would go on to found International House of Prayer in Kansas City—confided in Tammy Woods, the 14-year-old who was babysitting his children, that his wife Diane would die and “that we could be together,” a prelude to his repeatedly sexually abusing her. The founder of the outrageously successful church certainly felt that God had his back. He had the same vision over a decade later, when he told his 19-year-old female intern that his wife would die and that they would get married.

But maybe God had other plans. Thanks to these two women and their willingness to come forward to attest to Bickle’s misdeeds, a larger crisis of sexual abuse in evangelical Christianity has been exposed, and countless more allegations have followed. In June, Trump spiritual adviser Robert Morris resigned from his Dallas-based Gateway megachurch after he was accused of abusing a 12-year-old girl. Last month, his successor was fired for undisclosed “moral issues.”

That two towering figures of the charismatic evangelical movement have faced such serious allegations ought to lead to soul searching, and more importantly, a rush to ensure better safeguards so that pastors cannot abuse their authority. If the past is any guide, there’s little hope that any kind of reckoning is at hand. As we’ve seen with a series of similar scandals and a damning report into sexual abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention, America’s evangelical leaders have made failing to act responsibly into an art form.

Sexual abuse in churches has long been thought of as a “Catholic disease,” but as recent events have shown, it is unchecked power and authority, not celibacy, that is the root of the problem. It is also very much a crisis of the evangelical movement’s own making; in this milieu, commercial incentives have produced a culture where the more charismatic and authoritarian the leader, the more successful the church. The widespread culture of abuse, cover-up, and denial has been exacerbated by the kind of corruption that arises when friends appoint friends to positions of authority, tamping down any incentives toward transparency and accountability.

A big reason the problem has gotten out of control is the growing trend among evangelical churches of all stripes to label themselves “nondenominational.” According to religious data cruncher Ryan Burge, nearly 13 percent of all adults in the United States now identify as nondenominational Protestant Christians, and there are now more nondenominationals in the U.S. than mainline Protestants.

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Media, Democrats Breathlessly Defend Having Naval Ship Named After Gay Pederast

The Democrats and the corporate media came out guns blazing with a temper tantrum about how a U.S. Navy vessel may no longer be named after gay pedophile Harvey Milk.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly told the Office of the Secretary of the Navy to make plans for renaming the ship USNS Harvey Milk, according to Military.com, to come into “alignment with president and SECDEF objectives and SECNAV priorities of reestablishing the warrior culture.”

The left considers Milk a “gay rights icon” for being the first openly homosexual elected official in California. Milk was serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when he was murdered in 1978.

Milk, however, was a predator of young boys, as The Federalist reported. Milk’s biographer wrote that the then-33-year-old pursued a 16-year-old boy who was apparently in a vulnerable place and “looking for some kind of father figure.”

The pedophile, who was dishonorably discharged from the Navy after being questioned about his sexual activities in 1955, would also use alcohol and drugs to subdue underage boys and young men and manipulate them into perverse sexual activity.

He also had an affinity for infamous cult leader Jim Jones, a fellow sexual predator and architect of the mass murder-suicide of his followers in Jonestown, Guyana. Jones funded Milk’s political career, and Milk praised Jones’s cult, telling him, “Rev. Jim, it may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today. … I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave.”

In the wake of the murder-suicide claiming the lives of more than 900 people, Milk flippantly called it “a great experiment that didn’t work. I don’t know, maybe it did.”

Milk was not exactly the person anyone would have expected to be honored with being the namesake of a U.S. Navy vessel — an idea first floated by the Obama administration. But at the news of the potential renaming, Democrats and their bootlickers in the corporate media immediately fell into a frenzy.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the renaming is a “surrender of a fundamental American value: to honor the legacy of those who worked to build a better country” and that it was “a shameful, vindictive erasure of those who fought to break down barriers for all to chase the American Dream.”

Apparently for Pelosi, being a pedophile is part of building a “better country” and the “American Dream.”

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Democrat Georgia Mayor Arrested for Child Molestation, Wife Charged with Cruelty to Children

A Democrat mayor in Georgia has been arrested for child molestation, and his wife was also arrested and charged with cruelty to children.

Joseph Kelly, 38, the mayor of the City of Climax and a Decatur County School District employee, was charged with two counts of child molestation. Natalie Kelly, 44, was charged with two counts of cruelty to children in the second degree.

According to the school district’s website, he is a math teacher at Bainbridge High School. It is unclear if he remains employed there.

The acts are alleged to involve multiple children.

Both were arrested on Saturday.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said in a statement:

“On Saturday, May 31, 2025, the Decatur County Sheriff’s Office requested the assistance of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to investigate allegations that Joseph Kelly had sexual contact with multiple minors. Both Joseph and Natalie Kelly were arrested later that same day by GBI agents and Decatur County Sheriff’s Office investigators. They were booked into the Decatur County Jail.”

The bureau added, “At this time, there is no indication that the alleged acts are related to his employment.”

The accused child predator has since been released on a $55,400 bond. His wife was released on a $11,400 bond.

The investigation remains ongoing.

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Colorado man handed 210-year sentence for abusing children at Haitian orphanage

A Colorado man was sentenced to 210 years for sexually abusing children at the Haitian orphanage he founded and ran for decades.

According to court documents, 73-year-old Michael Karl Geilenfeld founded St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in 1985 and operated the orphanage for over two decades.

The home cared for orphaned, impoverished, and vulnerable Haitian children. according to a release from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

The DOJ claims Geilenfeld repeatedly traveled from the U.S. to Haiti, where he not only sexually and physically abused boys in his care.

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Parents Sound Alarm On YMCA Camps Allowing Boys In Girls’ Showers And Cabins

As kids prepare to head off to summer camp, a conservative group is warning parents that their daughters may not be safe at YMCA facilities across the country.

The American Parents Coalition on Wednesday urged parents to “beware” that the YMCA determines access to overnight cabins, locker rooms, and showers on the basis of gender identity. The coalition says that many YMCA facilities may not inform parents that boys could be bunking or showering with female campers, raising safety and privacy concerns.

“Parents deserve the truth — especially when it involves the possibility that their children could be put in a situation where they’re expected to share private spaces with members of the opposite sex,” American Parents Coalition Executive Director Alleigh Marré told The Daily Wire.

“Too many YMCA branches are putting gender ideology ahead of child safety by allowing locker rooms, showers, and cabins to become a free-for-all. This is unacceptable. Parents must question their local YMCA to ensure their child’s safety and advocate for sex-based spaces where they do not exist.”

Nationally, the YMCA recommends that “all campers and staff have access to the facilities aligned with their gender identity and comfort within facility and resource limitations.” The recommendations also suggest including transgender-identifying individuals in camp marketing.

YMCA camps and facilities across the country have adopted these guidelines, allowing females to be exposed to males in bathrooms or bunk with a person of the opposite sex. For example, Camp Olson in Longville, Minnesota, says access to facilities is based on gender identity, not sex.

“Access to gendered spaces (e.g. restrooms, overnight accommodations) should be based on gender identity. Sex assigned at birth, physical characteristics, or presentation should not dictate the use of gendered space. Trans individuals may select either restroom,” the camp’s guidelines say. “Requiring someone to use a bathroom or other gendered space of the gender they do not identify can be detrimental to an individual’s well-being and safety and puts Camp Olson at risk for discrimination complaints.”

The policy adds that if a female is uncomfortable using the same facility as a male identifying as female, then the female should use an alternate space, saying that “no one should be required to use an alternative restroom because they are trans.”

Rooming assignments at Camp Olson are also based on “gender identity,” with “requests taken into account for comfort and safety. All campers will be asked to select a cabin gender where they will feel most comfortable for that session upon registration.”

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