Paedophile, 32, jailed for 600 years for sexually abusing
two five-year-old children
A paedophile has been sentenced to 600 years in prison after he was convicted of sexually abusing two young children.
Matthew Miller, 32, was accused of forcing two kids aged under five to make child porn, according to a statement from the Department of Justice.
He was jailed in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, after prosecutors said the child pornography "robbed children of their childhood", according to The Sun.
Miller allegedly made the children "engage in sexual explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual production of such conduct," the statement said.
The abusive sex acts happened between 2014 and 2019, Metro reports.
He is said to have begun abusing the children when they were aged just four.
The paedophile was first arrested in February 2019 after authorities attended his home in Cottondale over a sexual abuse report regarding a child.
Officials found 102 pornographic images that Miller made of the kids when they carried out a search warrant, the US Attorney's Office of the Northern District of Alabama said in a statement.
Miller pleaded guilty to the charges in October 2019.
“The crimes for which Miller has admitted guilt are not only disturbing, they are sickening, and his actions robbed these children of their childhood,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp said in a statement.
Sharp added that Miller's sentencing - 7,200 months in prison - was in response to his "disturbing" and "sickening" actions, Mail Online reports.
Paedophile doctor sentenced 23-years for secretly recording children during medical examination
The doctor pleaded guilty to producing child pornography after taking videos of naked young boys at the clinics he worked at.
By Agrima Tikader, IBTimes
In 2018, police in Colorado, United States received a report that child pornography was being shared on a social media website. The Colorado Springs police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigated Dr. Justin Neisler in relation to the report.
When the authorities raided the doctor's home in Denver, Colorado they discovered pornographic images and videos of children on multiple devices. The medical practitioner was arrested in March 2019. Appearing in front of a federal court, the paedophile pleaded guilty to the charges against him. He has been sentenced to 23 years in prison and his medical license was forfeited.
Neisler has been working as a doctor for two clinics in Colorado and has the licence to practice in the state as well as in Georgia. While working with patients, he reportedly targeted young boys. He asked the parents of young boys to leave the children with him alone for examination. In the examination room, he made the children undress. Using his iPhone and a spy pen camera, he took videos of the boys in the nude without their knowledge or permission.
The Colorado Springs Police started an investigation into reports of child pornography being circulated. On March 13, 2019, they raided the home of Neisler. They confiscated multiple electronic devices including his cell phone. It was revealed that the man possessed 6,600 pornographic images and 1,725 pornographic videos of children. It is unclear how many of the images and videos were that of his patients.
From the evidence collected by the police, they were able to contact the victim's families. Centura Health, which operates the St. Anthony North Family Medicine in Westminster, announced that they had fired Neisler after his arrest.
In court, the parents of the victims confirmed that the former doctor had asked them to leave their children alone with him. The court was told that Neisler did not distribute the videos and images of his patients. The 32-year-old man reportedly used them for his own sexual gratification, the Denver Channel reported. It was also determined that the man did not commit any hands-on offences.
Neisler pleaded guilty to the charges of producing child pornography. The jail term will be followed by 10 years in a supervised release. He has to pay $10,100 (£7,945) to the court and to funds set up for the assistance of victims of child sex crimes. His medical license has been suspended and may be revoked.
Abuse claim resurfaces in ex-Erie, Pa teacher’s porn case
By Ed Palattella, GoErie
U.S. Attorney’s Office raises allegation against David Rinke II as he seeks to get out of prison early due to COVID-19.
In February 2012, David A. Rinke II, a former science teacher at the Erie School District’s Northwest Pennsylvania Collegiate Academy, was sentenced to nearly 20 years in federal prison for collecting and trading more than 50,000 images of child pornography, including videos of toddlers getting raped.
Rinke, who pleaded guilty, now wants to get out of prison early. He is citing the COVID-19 pandemic’s potential effect on what he says are his numerous health problems.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Erie wants Rinke to stay incarcerated. The government is contending that he remains a danger to the community and that he is not at risk for getting sick while he serves his sentence at the low-security facility at the Federal Correctional Complex at Allenwood, south of Williamsport.
To bolster its case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office disclosed new information against the 48-year-old Rinke in a document filed recently in U.S. District Court in Erie.
The office went into more detail about how Rinke was also accused of child sexual abuse.
One of the reasons Rinke remains a danger to the community if released early, Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian Trabold wrote in the filing, is because that, after Rinke was arrested in the child pornography investigation in 2011, a man told the FBI that Rinke repeatedly molested him as a minor, starting when the man was 11 and lasting until he graduated from high school.
Some of the abuse, according to the court filing, occurred on the grounds of what was then St. Andrew School, at West Sixth and Raspberry streets in Erie, where Rinke taught from 1996 to 1999. That was right before Rinke started at the Erie School District, where he was teaching 10th-grade science at Collegiate when he was arrested in 2011. St. Andrew School closed in 2006.
Rinke sexually abused the minor “at various locations” within St. Andrew School “including the gym and within Rinke’s classroom,” Trabold wrote. The minor was not one of Rinke’s students at the time, based on the filing and other information presented in court, and the abuse is alleged to have occurred when St. Andrew School was not in session.
The allegation adds another layer to what is one of the most significant child pornography cases to be prosecuted in federal court in Erie, based on Rinke’s position as a teacher and the length of the sentence.
The allegation, and the details surrounding it as listed in the court filing, also provide insight into how the U.S. Attorney’s Office developed the case against Rinke, who was teaching at Collegiate when he was arrested.
Rinke was never charged with child molestation, as the statute of limitations for a prosecution appeared to have expired, according to other information presented in Rinke’s case. Trabold in the new court filing said the man who came forward to the FBI after Rinke’s arrest “requested that his disclosure not be made public unless absolutely necessary.”
Rinke’s push to get out of prison started on July 7, when his lawyer filed a request for what is known as “compassionate release” in light of COVID-19.
Allenwood Low, the facility where Rinke is incarcerated, “has had no positive tests to date for COVID-19.”
Sounds like he is much safer where he is. Certainly, the children of Erie are.
California sex offender with long history of offenses gets
10-year sentence for child pornography
BY SAM STANTON
Sacramento Bee
There is little dispute that John Maasen has had a sexual attraction to children for decades.
The 65-year-old Olivehurst man began committing acts of indecent exposure while in his teens, and in 1974 he was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under 14 after he exposed himself to a young girl and tried to get her to touch him, court records say.
He was sent to Atascadero State Hospital at the age of 18 for four years as a “mentally disordered sex offender,” and after his release he was convicted two more times of indecent exposure, once in 1983 and again in 1990, court records say.
Now, Maasen is headed back to prison on a 10-year sentence for possession of child pornography that his own lawyer says he may not survive due to his health and age.
Maasen was sentenced Tuesday by U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez following a guilty plea last June that could have netted him as much as 20 years in prison.
Court filings depict a defendant who was deeply troubled by his past and his own actions.
Assistant Federal Defender Lexi Negin wrote in a sentencing memorandum that Maasen “was subjected to horrific child sexual abuse at the hands of his father,” and that the history of treatment at Atascadero “reads more like a horror story” than an attempt at rehabilitation.
“The ‘treatment’ he received during his four years at Atascadero likely did more harm than good,” Negin wrote. “Physically and emotionally immature, likely gay, and only 18 years old, Mr. Maasen was thrown into a sex offender program with adult males of all ages.
“It appears that the focus of treatment for Mr. Maasen was akin to conversion therapy to force him to be straight.”
Following his release from prison in 1991 and his completion of parole in 1994, Negin wrote, Maasen “has worked full time and has not been arrested.”
“His life has been an unremarkable, generally law-abiding one,” Negin wrote. “He registered as a sex offender in the places he worked and lived, and he no longer committed acts of indecent exposure or any crimes outside his home.”
But he apparently could not control himself.
Court papers say undercover agents investigating child pornography on the internet first observed him in January 2016 sharing “multiple files” online. By spring of 2018, he was observed sharing a video with images “containing sadistic sexual exploitation” of a young girl who appeared to be bound and blindfolded.
Investigators who searched his home in January 2019 found eight videos and 1,178 images involving child pornography on his desktop computer, as well as a browser history of visits to websites with names such as “Little-Girl-Sex,” “daughter and dad” and “very naked little girl,” court papers filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Shea Kenny say.
How do web sites lie that even exist? How sick some people are!
“He admitted to using file-sharing torrents to download child pornography,” court papers say. “He admitted that, recently, he had been smoking marijuana and that he was viewing more child pornography at that time.
Sin is progressive!
“Troublingly, Maasen admitted that his phone contained pictures of (teenage relatives) in bathing suits, and he told the interviewing agents that he took pictures of young boys at his church.”
But authorities found that most of the videos and images on his computer had been in the recycle bin, and that Maasen appeared to have tried to delete them at various times.
A forensic evaluation of his computer history showed he would view child pornography, then watch Christian videos. Then, he would return to watching pornography, court documents say.
Arthur Hively, a computer expert with 37 years of law enforcement who compiled a report on Maasen’s computer, wrote that he had investigated more than 100 child pornography cases and interviewed scores of suspects.
“One common theme during the years was one in which individuals would indicate to me that they would get the urge to obtain and view CP,” Hively wrote. “This urge would build and build until they accessed sites/programs where the CP could be obtained.
This is what demonic influence is like!
“After viewing the CP for days or weeks, the individual would delete all of the CP due to the built-up guilt that came from the knowledge that watching the CP was wrong and immoral. At times, they would also remove the software program they were using to access the CP (both on mobile devices and computers).
“While reviewing the reports in this case, as well as during my examination of the digital evidence, it appeared that this same theme was occurring again. Mr. Maasen told the agents that he viewed CP that he downloads for a month or two he deletes them because he ‘wants to stop the behavior.’ ”
Maasen’s attorney argues that there is no evidence that he had returned to his history of indecent exposure or that “his conduct was escalating in any way.”
“Mr. Maasen’s devices speak to his remorse for his own actions and his personal struggle with this material,” Negin wrote. “For example, the media player shows that child pornography videos were viewed in between viewing materials with religious messages.
“His computer was used for all manner of things, including his participation in his religion. His computer bears out a pattern of receiving child pornography via the internet and then deleting it.”
Negin also argued that Maasen’s age and various ailments mean he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
“He has diabetes, neuropathy, arthritis and high blood pressure,” Negin wrote. “He walks with a cane. His age, diabetes and high blood pressure put him at a higher risk to contract COVID-19.
“He will need geriatric care in prison as he is generally suffering from age-related deterioration compounded by his diabetes. Given Mr. Maasen’s age and physical health, he may very well not survive a ten-year prison sentence.”
Schoolcraft, Mi man arrested on charges of child sex abuse
Kalamazoo, MI, USA / WKZO
Will Kriss
SCHOOLCRAFT, MI (WKZO AM/FM) — The Michigan State Police (MSP) announced Tuesday that a Schoolcraft man has been arrested in a child sexual abuse case.
Police say the investigation conducted by the MSP Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force was launched from a National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) tip. The tip concerned a large amount of child sexually abusive material, suspected manufactured child sexually abusive material and evidence of criminal sexual conduct.
Further investigation led to locating a residence in Schoolcraft where the suspect, 29-year-old Ryan Ahern, was living. An arrest warrant for Ahern was issued after an interview and an investigation of the property.
Ahern has been charged with the following:
criminal sexual conduct first degree (person under 13),
child sexually abusive activity,
aggravated child sexually abusive material possession,
child sexually abusive activity – distributing or promoting, and
use of a computer to commit a crime.
Ahern was arraigned on all counts on September 24.
Pr. George, Md officer indicted on sex abuse charges involving minor
By Emily Davies
Washington Post
A Prince George’s County police officer was indicted on sex abuse charges involving a minor, prosecutors announced Tuesday.
A grand jury indicted Cpl. Tristan Thigpen on charges of sex abuse of a minor, third-degree sex offense, second-degree assault and fourth-degree sex offense, prosecutors said. The victim was someone Thigpen knew, according to prosecutors and court documents.
Thigpen was already suspended from the department at the time of the alleged incident, which prosecutors say occurred on or around April 1. The county department had revoked Thigpen’s police powers in 2018 after he was arrested for driving under the influence in Nevada, authorities said.
Thigpen is now suspended without pay, police said.
“The fact the allegations against this officer involve a child make them all the more troubling,” interim police chief Hector Velez said in a statement. “We immediately opened an investigation and brought this case to the State’s Attorney’s Office for possible prosecution.”
Prosecutors said a warrant has been issued for Thigpen, who could not be immediately reached for comment. He could serve up to 35 years in prison if he is found guilty on all counts.
Not the best retirement plan I've seen.
“Any case involving sex abuse of a child is serious,” Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said. “When the allegations are made against an officer, it is particularly egregious.”
This majority-Black D.C. suburb instituted police reforms years ago. It’s trying again.
Child abuse victims’ data exposed in Montgomery Co., Md
John Domen
WTOP News
Names, medical and biographical information from hundreds of children who fell victim to physical and sexual abuse were left unsecured on a file sharing platform in Montgomery County, Maryland, according to an inspector general’s report.
Following a tip it received last week, Montgomery County’s Office of the Inspector General said it found “sensitive and Personally Identifiable Information” on an “information sharing platform” used by the county.
More than a dozen unauthorized Montgomery County employees had accessed the data when the discovery was made, according to the OIG, adding that the information has since been removed from the SharePoint file sharing platform.
The victims were all evaluated by the Tree House Child Advocacy Center, a Rockville-based nonprofit that works with the county, approximately 529 in all, according to the OIG.
It is the second time this year the OIG said it found Montgomery County failed to protect sensitive data on its computer systems.
In February, the OIG notified the county’s chief administrative officer of “a serious privacy risk” tied to the use of a collaboration application. The OIG said it found “nonpublic documents connected to county leadership and county departments on an information sharing platform.”
In May, the OIG reported that it discovered an “unsecured document” containing the Social Security number, bank account number, address and other personal data of a Medicare benefits applicant.
The OIG said it received information about the most recent security lapse from a concerned Montgomery County employee on Sept. 23. The worker said “they were able to access records pertaining to Tree House through the SharePoint platform.”
An even larger number of files from other departments were also found to be unsecured, according to the OIG.
In response, the OIG issued five recommendations to Montgomery County, such as urging it to “discontinue the use of file sharing platforms until data security vulnerabilities are addressed.”
But the county called that suggestion impractical.
“Discontinuing the use of file sharing and collaboration across the county would drastically impact business operations, especially during a time of significant remote teleworking,” said Richard Madaleno, Montgomery County’s chief administrative officer, in a Sept. 29 letter to Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi.
Another recommendation was for the county to instruct employees and the Department of Technology Services to “delete documents containing PII and other sensitive information from document sharing platforms.”
The county said it was “unable to concur with this recommendation” as well. The rejection of those two recommendations led the OIG to state the county “does not seem to fully grasp the severity of our findings or the impact of the data exposure incidents to victims.”
The conclusion goes on to state that the actions Montgomery County is willing to take don’t “address the reality that documents … are currently available to persons who have no legitimate need for them.”
It's time for a lawsuit! That might raise the level of importance of this issue. The county doesn't seem to get the devastation that is possible in the revictimization of child sexual abuse survivors. I hope they get it soon!
Pueblo, Colo police searching for alleged child sex offender
By Lindsey Grewe
PUEBLO, Colo. (KKTV) - Police need help finding an accused child sex offender.
The Pueblo Police Department says the child sex assault charges are from last year, but they have not been able to locate him. They released a picture of Sandoval Friday in hopes the public has seen him.
Anyone with information on Sandoval’s whereabouts is asked to call Detective Nicole Olonia at 719-553-2551.
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