As TFTP has reported, since 2017, information over a years-long child abuse saga involving Louisville Metropolitan Police Department (LMPD) officers has slowly trickled out, leading to multiple officers being arrested and sentenced to prison. Hardly an isolated incident, in total, a series of seven lawsuits names more than eight current or former LMPD officers. One of those officers — who was subsequently arrested for child sex abuse — was officer Brad Schuhmann, 32.
Despite horrifying details coming out in the case against Schuhmann, he was granted a sweetheart plea deal in which he will avoid jail for sexually abusing a little girl in the department’s explorer program.
According to his indictment, Schuhmann willfully deprived the victim of liberty without due process of law, which includes the “right not to have her bodily integrity violated by a person acting under color of law.”
Nevertheless, Schuhmann was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Rebecca Jennings Grady on Wednesday to just six months of home confinement and two years of probation, the Courier Journal reported. He must also register as a sex offender.
The victim called Schuhmann a “monster” and a “predator” in an impact statement and said “this man robbed me of my goals.”
As the Courier Journal reports, identified only as “Jane Doe,” she said she has lived in shame since Schuhmann had sexual contact with her when she was a teenager in the now-defunct scouting program for youngsters interested in law enforcement.
Schuhmann did not deny the sexual abuse and instead admitted to having sexual contact with her at her home and other locations. He said he has since changed since that incident, which he called “the worst decision of my life.”
Schuhmann becomes the third cop in this child sex scandal to be convicted. It has taken years to make such a small headway as the department has been helping to cover it up.
As TFTP reported, inside information into the years-long child sex abuse saga was not at all easy to obtain and now we know why. The department hid 738,000 records documenting the sexual abuse of Explorer Scouts by officers — and then, according to records requested by the Courier Journal, lied to keep the files from the public.
According to the Journal, the newspaper requested all records regarding the sexual abuse of minors by LMPD officers involved in the Explorer program, a program for children who are interested in becoming cops. However, police claimed that they couldn’t turn over the records, telling the Journal that they had already been turned over to the FBI.
“LMPD does not have possession or control of the records,” LMPD records custodian Alicia Smiley wrote in a Sept. 3, 2019, letter to Assistant Attorney General Marcus Jones. “When the investigation was taken by the FBI, all copies of the investigative materials … were physically removed from the premises, digital devices and servers of LMPD.”
But that was a lie, the LMPD had hundreds of thousands of records on child sexual abuse by officers in the Explorer program.
According to the Journal, the department still had at least 738,000 records, which the city allowed to be deleted.
The records detail the actions taken — or rather not taken — when the department learned about the sexual abuse of children in the program.
“I have practiced open records law since the law was enacted 45 years ago, and I have never seen anything so brazen,” said Jon Fleischaker, an attorney for the Courier Journal. “I think it an outrage.”
Another lawyer for the Courier Journal, Michael Abate, said the city’s conduct was especially egregious given the case involves the sexual abuse of children by police officers and the department’s failure to prevent it.
Metro Council President David James said, “it’s very disturbing to me that either the county attorney’s office or the police department was so dead-set on making sure those records never reached the public.”
Councilman Anthony Piagentini, R-19th, said, “There aren’t the appropriate words to describe how indefensible this is. The administration oversaw the sexual exploitation of minors and then deleted evidence.”
Jean Porter, a spokesman for Mayor Greg Fischer, said his “focus is getting to the truth in this horrific case.”
But what does the truth matter when the abusers avoid jail for their actions?
Hellbound and Down 
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