Tag: child abuse

Stanford researchers find Mastodon has a massive child abuse material problem

Mastodon, the decentralized network viewed as a viable alternative to Twitter, is rife with child sexual abuse material (CSAM), according to a new study from Stanford’s Internet Observatory (via The Washington Post). In just two days, researchers found 112 instances of known CSAM across 325,000 posts on the platform — with the first instance showing up after just five minutes of searching.

To conduct its research, the Internet Observatory scanned the 25 most popular Mastodon instances for CSAM. Researchers also employed Google’s SafeSearch API to identify explicit images, along with PhotoDNA, a tool that helps find flagged CSAM. During its search, the team found 554 pieces of content that matched hashtags or keywords often used by child sexual abuse groups online, all of which were identified as explicit in the “highest confidence” by Google SafeSearch.

There were also 713 uses of the top 20 CSAM-related hashtags across the Fediverse on posts that contained media, as well as 1,217 text-only posts that pointed to “off-site CSAM trading or grooming of minors.” The study notes that the open posting of CSAM is “disturbingly prevalent.”

One example referenced the extended mastodon.xyz server outage we noted earlier this month, which was an incident that occurred due to CSAM posted to Mastodon. In a post about the incident, the sole maintainer of the server stated they were alerted to content containing CSAM but notes that moderation is done in his spare time and can take up to a few days to happen — this isn’t a giant operation like Meta with a worldwide team of contractors, it’s just one person.

While they said they took action against the content in question, the host of the mastodon.xyz domain had suspended it anyway, making the server inaccessible to users until they were able to reach someone to restore its listing. After the issue was resolved, mastodon.xyz’s administrator says the registrar added the domain to a “false positive” list to prevent future takedowns. However, as the researchers point out, “what caused the action was not a false positive.”

“We got more photoDNA hits in a two-day period than we’ve probably had in the entire history of our organization of doing any kind of social media analysis, and it’s not even close,” David Thiel, one of the report’s researchers, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “A lot of it is just a result of what seems to be a lack of tooling that centralized social media platforms use to address child safety concerns.”

Keep reading

Former pastor charged with killing 8-year-old girl who was walking to Bible camp nearly 50 years ago

An 83-year-old former pastor has been charged with the kidnapping and murder of a neighboring pastor’s daughter in 1975, Pennsylvania officials announced Monday.

The suspect, David Zandstra, was arrested on July 17 in Cobb County, Georgia, where investigators say he confessed to killing 8-year-old Gretchen Harrington nearly five decades ago when he was a pastor in Marple Township, Pennsylvania, according to the Delaware County District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania.

His confession came after investigators presented him with new evidence gathered early this year, which came from an interview with a confidential informant and a diary entry the informant wrote in 1975 when she was a 10-year-old girl, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

Zandstra has been charged with criminal homicide, murder, kidnapping of a minor and the possession of an instrument of crime, the release said.

“Justice has been a long time coming, but we are proud and grateful to finally be able to give the community an answer,” Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said in a statement.

This case has “haunted” members of law enforcement and the small area of Marple Township since Gretchen went missing, Stollsteimer said. The girl was last seen walking to summer Bible camp on August 15th, 1975, the release said.

The camp was held at both the Trinity Church Chapel Christian Reform Church – where Zandstra was a pastor – and the Reformed Presbyterian Church – where Gretchen’s father was a pastor, the release said. Gretchen’s father became concerned when she failed to appear at his church, the release says, and it was Zandstra who then called police to report Gretchen’s disappearance.

Investigators noted there were inaccuracies in Zandstra’s early statements and they had questions about how the pastor knew so much about what Gretchen was wearing that day, even though she never arrived at camp, according to a newly released criminal complaint.

At the time, Zandstra denied knowing anything about the disappearance, the complaint said.

Two months later, Gretchen’s skeletal remains were found in nearby Ridley Creek State Park. Her cause of death was homicide, and the medical examiner said Gretchen suffered “two or more blunt impacts to the skull,” according to court documents.

Nearly five decades went by as the case laid dormant. Ultimately, an interview with a woman who was friends with the suspect’s daughter in the 1970s – and her diary entries from that time – led to a pivotal break in the case.

Keep reading

Alleged serial rapist, a former State Street VP, granted special allowances to attend concert, family trips

Ivan Cheung, an alleged serial rapist and former State Street executive, was reportedly granted allowances to let him take trips and spend time with family this summer.

Cheung was arrested last year and charged with four counts of aggravated rape, four counts of aggravated rape of a child, and two counts of aggravated statutory rape tied to four incidents dating back to 2003, 2005, and 2006, police said at the time.

He was released on $200,000 bail with conditions a few weeks later. Cheung was ordered to remain in Massachusetts, surrender his passport, stay away from any accusers or witnesses, and wear a GPS monitoring bracelet.

“Mr. Cheung’s family is important to him, and he is important to his family,” a motion filed by his attorney states, according to The Boston Herald. “The very limited modifications he seeks in his bail conditions will permit him to spend quality time with his entire family before his eldest son departs for college.”

Cheung requested to stay out past his curfew on Aug. 1 for a fishing and crabbing trip to Cape Cod, on Aug. 5 to attend a concert with his wife, sister, and brother-in-law, on Aug. 12 to sleep over at his sister’s home with his wife and their two children, and on Aug. 23 to move his son into college housing within Massachusetts, the Herald reported.

He was initially arrested when investigators linked him to evidence collected from the most recent attacks by getting a DNA sample from a cigarette butt he had discarded, The Boston Globe reported.

Keep reading

Why Do Neo-Nazis Keep Getting Arrested For Child Sexual Abuse Material?

Last June, according to court documents, Jared Boyce crammed himself into the back of a U-Haul with his fellow members of Patriot Front, a white supremacist group, to protest an LGBTQ pride event in Idaho and slur attendees as “groomers.” Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the hateful crew wearing matching khaki pants, it’s unlikely Boyce knew this would result in him eventually being sentenced to a year in prison for sexual exploitation of a minor. 

Once the group pulled up to the event, they were all promptly arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit a riot. Less than a month later, police seized Boyce’s phone. While they weren’t actively searching for illegal sexual material on it, they found 22 photos of child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. According to court documents, these photos “involve children from toddlers to prepubescents performing sexual acts on adults or other children, as well as images of children exposing their genitals.” The 28-year-old had also, police found, sent a picture of his penis to a 16-year-old girl. 

“Don’t believe the media,” Boyce reportedly told his mother following his initial arrest. “We were just there because they’re grooming kids.”

Boyce plead guilty to nine felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor earlier this year. The Patriot Front member is hardly the first person connected to neo-Nazi groups to be caught with CSAM.

In just the past few months, at least two neo-Nazis in the UK were sentenced to time in prison for having or distributing CSAM. Luca Benincasa, a 20-year-old from Cardiff who was a cell leader for the neo-Nazi group Feuerkrieg Division, was sentenced to nine years for possession of documents likely to be useful to a terrorist, being a member of a banned group, and possessing indecent photos of children. 

Keep reading

Trans former NH lawmaker faces federal charges for allegedly using daycare connections to generate child exploitation images

The first openly transgender lawmaker in the US is facing federal charges in connection with sexual exploitation at a Tyngsborough, Massachusetts daycare center. A teacher at the daycare who assisted the lawmaker in obtaining sexual pictures of the children has also been arrested and was charged in June. In a press release, the Justice Department referred to trans-identified male Stacie Laughton as “a New Hampshire woman.”

Stacie Laughton, 39, has been federally charged with one count of sexual exploitation of children and aiding and abetting by the US Attorney’s Office District of Massachusetts. Lindsay Groves, Laughton’s former girlfriend, was the alleged teacher at the center who helped Laughton, a former NH lawmaker, gather the images and has been charged with child exploitation.  

Groves allegedly used bathroom breaks for the children, such as diaper changes, to take pictures of the children in the bathroom and would send the photos to Laughton.  

There were over 2,500 text messages between Laughton and Groves on the phones obtained by the prosecution. These included at least four sexually explicit pictures of children between three and five years of age.  

According to the Boston Herald, in one alleged text from Groves, she said to Laughton, “I want to do this with you with one of my kids.” The text was in conjunction with a picture focused on the genitals of a prepubescent boy.  

Laughton allegedly responded, “I also need to be honest I mean yes that picture was hot of that little boy but you probably have gotten the picture by now that I prefer little girls (sic), but he is cute.” 

Other texts allegedly talked about the couple hooking up with each other as well as with children.  

Groves was employed by the daycare from 2017 up until June of this year, according to the Boston Herald.

Keep reading

Bloomberg ‘Sound Of Freedom’ Hit Piece Written By Pro-Pedo Contributor

Following the release of the “Sound of Freedom,” Jim Caviezel’s anti-child-trafficking film, a chorus of mainstream hit-pieces came out denouncing it as a “QAnon” conspiracy flick.

But one author of a recent SoF hit-piece in Bloomberg isn’t just against the movie, he’s a pedo-defending freelancer who used to work for an organization working to normalize pedophilia.

Meet Noah Berlatsky: he’s just your average liberal mainstream media news contributor. Ironically, Berlatsky’s latest criticism of the drama focusing on the grave yet glossed over issue of child trafficking lambasted the movie with vitriolic scorn for perpetuating dangerous tropes, whilst he himself turned to the truly tired trope of accusing the movie of packaging together various QAnon conspiracy theories and being a movie made for alt-right boomers. There’s just one problem…Berlatsky has a sordid history of advocating for the normalization of pedophilia.

In 2021, Berlatsky was named the communications director at Prostasia, a non-profit organization which has dedicates itself to a self-avowed mission of protecting children from sexual abuse. While that on its face sounds antithetical to advocating for the normalization of pedophilia, a deeper look into Prostasia’s published content shows it merely masquerades under the guise of acting in the interest of protecting children from sexual abuse in order to promote a much more perverse ulterior motive.

Keep reading

Nobody is Torturing Children to Harvest Adrenochrome

There is a certain relatively small, but enthusiastic percentage of the population that are prone to believe in conspiracies. Having been someone who has put in some time debunking conspiracy theories over the years, I can tell you a little bit about their patterns of thought and the way that they argue. Usually, conspiracy theorists have such a poor understanding of the subject that they’re talking about that it seems like magic to them and thus, anything seems possible. On occasion, after being dragged over and over again for their conspiratorial beliefs, they’ll learn a little something about what they’re talking about, but their knowledge is often badly flawed because their goal is to “prove” their conspiracy theory right, not to actually get to the truth.

Their style of argumentation is usually illogical and incoherent. They tend to throw pretty much anything against the wall to see what sticks and then insist that you disprove every single thing they come up with, while completely ignoring the much larger piles of evidence supporting some mainstream belief they’re trying to undermine.

If you talk to 10 conspiracy theorists, they will typically all have different arguments supporting their beliefs. Disproving the pillars of their argument has no impact on them because their beliefs have no real logic or structure to them. If you disprove one of their key pieces of evidence, they just move on to the next. They also almost universally ignore the fact that theories don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re measured against competing theories. If I say the world is round and you say the world is flat, then how both competing theories handle questions and statements like, “If the world is flat, where’s the edge?” or “People have looked at Earth from space and we see that it’s not flat,” matter a lot. They do not look at it that way. They believe what they believe, and no amount of contrary evidence is going to change it.

It also must be noted that conspiracy theories often rely heavily on a “them” that you’re supposed to believe are capable of anything. This leads to statements like, “Of course, they’re behind (insert horrible thing here)! You don’t think that the ‘Republicans/Democrats/Jews/Karl Rove/Bushes/Clintons/George Soros/Rothschilds/Illuminati/Big Pharma/white supremacist Martians from Venus/whoever’ are capable of that? Are you naïve?”

After reading this basic rundown about how conspiracy theorists argue things to get you prepared for the aftermath of sharing this article everywhere someone promotes this idea (hint, hint), let’s start to talk about adrenochrome.

Keep reading

Veteran Huw Edwards Is the Mystery BBC Presenter Accused of Paying Underage Teen for Sexually Explicit Pictures – He Was Named by His Wife, Who Says He Is in Hospital Treating ‘Serious Mental Health Issues’

The mystery British Broadcast Corporation (BBC) presenter accused of paying a teenager for sexually explicit pictures has finally been revealed to be veteran Huw Edwards.

Variety reported:

“Edwards is one of the most senior on-air figures at the corporation and was the anchor chosen to break news of Queen Elizabeth II’s death to the world last September. He is the fourth highest paid figure at the BBC.”

Huw Edwards’ identity had not yet been reported by the media because of UK’s defamation and privacy case law, but reportedly his identity had been an open secret at the BBC all along.

But, now, the legendary BBC veteran was named by his own wife, Vicky Flind, in a statement issued on his behalf.

Keep reading

Biden’s DOJ Removes ‘International Sex Trafficking of Minors’ as an ‘Area of Concern’

The Department of Justice (DOJ), led by Democrat President Joe Biden, has taken child sex trafficking off it’s list of offenses that it regards as “areas of concern.”

The DOJ removed information from their webpage on child sex trafficking in late May.

The section had been added by President Donald Trump’s administration and highlighted that cracking down on the “international sex trafficking of minors” was a top priority for the U.S. government.

The horrible crime is no longer recorded as a “concern” for Biden’s DOJ, it has just been disclosed that the data was erased.

Steve Bannon’s Warroom journalist Natalie Winters revealed the astounding modification.

The shift in strategy comes as criticism of Biden’s ongoing encouragement of mass migration through America’s open southern border grows.

The border is a prime avenue for child sex trafficking, as we at Leading Report have previously reported.

It also coincides with the recent release of the hit anti-child trafficking film “Sound of Freedom.”

On May 12th, 2023, the Department of Justice (DOJ) made significant changes to its homepage detailing what defines child sex trafficking and how the department is combating it, including the removal of the three sections: “International Sex Trafficking of Minors”; “Domestic Sex Trafficking of Minors,” and “Child Victims of Prostitution.”

The website, which belongs to the DOJ’s Criminal Division, lists the “subject areas” that the organization’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Services concentrate on.

Keep reading

NY principal allegedly seeking sex with teen on Snapchat brought chicken nuggets, shake to remote location prior to arrest

An upstate middle-school principal used Snapchat to try to lure a 16-year-old girl to meet him in a remote location for sex — bringing with him condoms, chicken nuggets and a Grimace milkshake from McDonald’s, authorities say.

Johnson City Middle School Principal Daniel Erickson was arrested Friday and charged with luring a child and attempted rape, the Broome County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Erickson, 55, had been allegedly communicating with the teen for at least a week before his arrest.

The New York principal made statements to her that indicated he was “going to engage in sexual conduct with the minor,” the sheriff’s office said.

Erickson initially posed as a younger adult before revealing his true identity to the girl, officials said.

He then used “his position as the Johnson City Middle School Principal and school district database information to convince the 16-year-old girl who he really was,” authorities said.

Keep reading