Hidden Secrets: Sexual Abuse and the Hidden Children of the Holocaust

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In honour of that I present some research into the sexual abuse of Jewish children who were hidden from the Nazis during WWII. They were the lucky ones, except some were not so fortunate.

Jewish children who lived in hiding generally were treated well by their rescuers. But not all youngsters had such experiences. Because they could not turn to local authorities for help or were afraid of being turned out, some children had to endure physical or sexual abuse by their “protectors.”

Studies conducted in the Netherlands estimate that more than 80% of the hidden children interviewed were treated well by their rescuers, while 15% were occasionally mistreated, and some 5% were treated badly.

Read the inspiring story of a Dutch Christian family who sheltered a Jewish family during the war.

A new study conducted at the Haifa University reveals that Holocaust survivors who suffered sexual abuse during World War II were much more traumatized by molestation than by any other of the horrifying experiences they went through during that period.

The study, the first ever to focus on the subject, is set to be presented next Sunday in the framework of a conference to mark the international Holocaust Memorial Day at the university.

Prof. Rachel Lev-Wiesel, who conducted the research, said that although the survivors experienced other traumatic events during the holocaust, including the loss of parents, physical abuse and hunger, the memory of sexual abuse remained etched in their minds more than anything else.

"This abuse still causes incessant thoughts on the subject and nightmares," Lev-Wiesel said.

The study consists of interviews with 22 men and women in Israel and the United States, who were willing to share with the researcher stories about the abuse they underwent during the war.

Lev-Wiesel said that some people who offered to take part in the study were rejected, because she believed they would not be able to cope with the burden of memories and the self-exposure involved with the interview.

The average age of the interviewees stood at 68 years, and Lev-Wiesel said all have told their story with clarity and precision, in contradiction to how people usually speak of a traumatic event.

This is proof, Lev-Wiesel said, that the survivors retell the story in their heads over and over again, reliving the past daily.

All the survivors interviewed for the study have spent the war years on the run from the Nazis, some at hiding in the houses of Christians, others moving from place to place with the partisans, an easy prey for menacing adults along the way.

According to Prof. Lev-Wiesel, this fact does not eliminate the possibility similar incidents took place at ghettos as well.

In some of the cases revealed in the study, the abuse was carried out by relatives or other Jews, which alleviated the trauma and embarrassment among survivors.

 In one of the cases the abuser was a man who helped smuggle children from one place to another, in another it was a father who sexually abused his daughter, and in several other incidents – mothers who molested their sons.

Prof. Lev-Wiesel stressed that situations of stress and war do not create pedophiles, but that they enable such people to operate more freely.

Downloading Child Abuse 'Manuals' to be Made Illegal in UK

Downloading manuals containing guidance about how to groom children for sexual abuse is to become a criminal offence, the government has said.

Good on you, PM. This should be happening in every country. Is there something you can do to help make it happen?

It is unclear how many documents meant to assist paedophiles exist online or how often they are downloaded.

But the National Crime Agency has found examples during its investigations, which have included advice on grooming victims and evading capture.

The government measure is set to feature in the Queen's Speech.

Laws similar to those used for terrorist publications could be introduced

Details of how the law might be changed are yet to be announced, but it is thought ministers will amend the Obscene Publications Act 1959 to close the legal loophole.

But the government may put in place measures similar to those that outlaw training manuals which could be used by terrorists, and have led to prison sentences of up two years in some cases.

Prime Minister David Cameron told the Sunday Times: "It's completely unacceptable that there is a loophole in the law which allows paedophiles to write and distribute these disgusting documents.

"I want to ensure we do everything we can to protect children - and that's why I am making them illegal."

The move came as it emerged that a paedophile teacher drugged and abused up to 60 boys as young as 10 at a private school in London.

US national William Vahey, 64, who taught history and geography at Southbank International School between 2009 and 2013, committed suicide last month as FBI agents closed in.

Shadow home office minister Diana Johnson said it was right that such manuals be banned, but criticised the government for not going "far enough or fast enough" to prevent online child abuse.

"The fact that online guides for abusing children are currently legal shows how ill-suited current legislation is for protecting children online," Ms Johnson said.

"At present online abuse is increasing while the number of arrests is falling."

She said the government should make online abuse a priority for the National Crime Agency, and that it should look at the broader issues of the regulation of dangerous online content.

NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless also said more needed to be done - and quickly - to tackle online child sex offenders.

"The government must ensure police have the investigative capacity to infiltrate and disrupt the networks of offenders hidden online, so these disgusting criminals are brought to justice," Mr Wanless said.

"Some Quite Extreme Cases of Abuse" Expected as Royal Commission Heads West

Former child migrant tells harrowing tale of abuse as royal commission heads to Western Australia

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will begin two weeks of hearings in Western Australia on Monday.

The focus will be on four institutions run by the Christian Brothers: the Bindoon Farm School, St Mary's Agricultural School, St Vincent's Orphanage Clontarf and Castledare Junior Orphanage.

John Hennessey, who migrated to Australia as a child, is one of a number of men set to give evidence.

Mr Hennessey was 10 years old when he was taken from his orphanage in Bristol, England, in the mid-1940s and sent to Western Australia.

He says the commission will open old wounds.

"I remember one day - it was a Sunday - these three Christian Brothers came to the hall and the nuns told us the Brothers are looking for children to go to Australia," he said.

"They said 'You go to Australia - kangaroos will take you to school, there's fruit everywhere'. We were only little kids and this was music to our ears."

A group of child migrants sent from Britain to Western Australia

Mr Hennessey was among a group of children shipped to Fremantle and then taken to Bindoon, about an hour north of Perth.

"I remember Brother Keaney, he was a big man dressed in his black habit. He said: 'Welcome. We're going to make men of you, we don't want you to be little girls'," he said.

 In those days, we were little kids, we didn't know what paedophilia was.

"The place was half built. Now you look at it, I can't understand why nobody checked out where we were going."

The boys were forced to help construct the property's Spanish-style buildings with their bare hands.

But Mr Hennessey says hard labour was not the worst of it, with savage beatings and sexual abuse making Bindoon a living hell.

John Hennessey was sent to Bindoon
as a child where he suffered abuse.

"In those days, we were little kids, we didn't know what paedophilia was," he said.

"You'd go to bed at night time fearing that someone was going to come to your bed and pick you up.

"We used to go to confessions and tell them all sorts of things. And we didn't know that the priest also was a paedophile."

Mr Hennessey was emotional as he recounted a particularly brutal beating he believes caused the stutter he has lived with ever since.

He said he was confronted by Brother Keaney in the dining hall after sneaking into his vineyard and stealing grapes.

"He lashed out with his walking stick, it had a metal bottom to it, and he belted me over the head and what have you," he said.

"Then he stripped me, put me over a chair and nearly flogged me to death.

"Abuse and bullying was just the norm."

The royal commission will spend two weeks in Perth listening to the stories of victims from the four children's homes.

The commission's chief executive, Janette Dines, warned some of the evidence presented would be particularly severe.

"These stories are probably quite well-known to people in Western Australia because the Christian Brothers institutions have been the subject of a number of inquiries," she said.

"Certainly, from what we're aware, the stories of physical and sexual abuse are very confronting, and there will be some quite extreme cases of abuse put before the royal commission."

The Christian Brothers apologised to West Australian victims in the 1990s and reached an out-of-court settlement with some of them.

The Christian Brothers are a disgrace to the name Christian. Their sordid debauchery and decidedly unchristian character has been documented all over the world from Canada to Ireland and to Australia.

Ms Dines said the Perth hearings would look at that response, as well as the way the State Government handled complaints and compensation claims.

"This is the first time that the commission has really specifically gone into redress," she said.

"It can do so very effectively through this case study because there are so many different schemes featured.

The body set up by the Catholic Church to respond to the commission says it is expecting horrific stories of abuse and has called for full transparency.

"It's incumbent on the Christian Brothers to come forward again and explain themselves, to make sure the truth is revealed and demonstrate to the community the sincerity they hold for the victims," said Francis Sullivan, the chief executive of the Truth Justice and Healing Council.

"Whether it's the Christian Brothers or the State Government or any other element in how this was handled - how the legal, civil actions were handled - it all needs to be revealed."

Mr Hennessey campaigned for the royal commission and says it was important for victims like himself to come forward.

He was reunited with his mother when he was 57 and spent six years with her before she died.

"She'd been told I died at birth," he said.

"I never told her of my childhood days because I thought it was enough what she went through and it would break her heart.

"I'm doing this for my mother. If I can only save one child from what I went through, it's all worthwhile.

"We will be washed clean but forever tortured. There's no way out of that one."

Please pray for strength and courage for the witnesses as they come forward to testify. Also, please pray for the so-called 'Christian' Brothers to be open and honest and act with integrity. That they will stop dishonouring the name they are so good at trashing.

International Pervert, Vahey, Fed Boys Cookies Laced with Sleeping Pills

London: A paedophile teacher abused up to 60 boys at a leading private school after plying them with Oreo cookies laced with sleeping pills, it was claimed yesterday.

William Vahey, 64, is said to have held a ‘cookie race’ at bedtime in which children as young as 10 were encouraged to eat as many as they could, unaware they had been drugged. Once the pupils passed out, some were sexually assaulted.

Details of the calculating schemes of the predator emerged as the extent of his offending became clear Saturday.

FBI investigators said more than 100 potential victims had come forward since news broke yesterday that the married American had taken pictures of himself attacking up to 60 sleeping students from the elite Southbank International School in Westminster during class trips abroad between 2009 and 2013.

The sickening images depicted children aged ten to 14 at the international school, where he taught history and geography and led trips to Jordan, Nepal and Venezuela.

Another 30 children, who also appeared to be unconscious or asleep when the assaults took place, were pictured from other schools he worked in during a 40-year career spent teaching at 10 American international schools in nine countries.

Southbank Int'l School

 Southbank International School, which is favoured by diplomats and foreign executives, has 758 pupils and charges fees of GBP25,000 a year.

Vahey committed suicide at a motel in the US last month as the FBI were poised to investigate a USB memory stick containing the graphic images of naked children dating back to 2008.

The father of two plunged a knife into his chest two days after confessing that he had abused boys throughout his life using sleeping pills.

Police later removed items from his £1.8million (Dh11 million) apartment in Maida Vale, west London, where he is alleged to have kept large amounts of sleeping pills.

Vahey 1986

Vahey 2013 and 2004

On Saturday a British mother of two, whose teenage sons went on seven school trips with Vahey, said he used to hand out Oreo cookies and tell pupils that they could be the lead character in his bedtime story if they won the cookie race.

The mother, who did not wish to be identified, said he “groomed” pupils and parents: “The boys would sit around and were handed Oreos. He would tell them to go and he would drop his hand to start the race.

“Then the first one who had the Oreo, the higher up they would be in the story and so on. He would have been able to split the Oreos apart, ground up the stuff and sprinkle it in the middle.” The mother was once a friend of Vahey and his wife Jean, 66, who is the executive director of the European Council of International Schools. For how long, I wonder?

An FBI affidavit obtained by the Daily Mail showed how he catalogued the abuse by time and location in folders on a USB memory stick entitled “Panama trip”, “Costa Rica trip” and “Basketball trip” and “Spring 2013”.

The document says: “These images depict minor males in various states of undress... The minor males appear to be asleep, unconscious or possibly drugged.”

Vahey, who left Southbank International last year, was only caught after a housekeeper at a school he moved to in Nicaragua stole a memory stick containing the vile images.

She was sacked but later passed the USB stick to administrators at the American School in Managua, who dismissed Vahey after recognising his hand in the images.

In 1970, while studying for a teaching degree, Vahey was jailed for 90 days after pleading guilty to molesting boys at a swimming pool where he was working as an instructor in California.

He was required to register as a sex offender for life, but after graduating from college in 1972 failed to sign the register. Can't believe it's a voluntary thing.

In 2010 an inspection report had warned of a weakness in staff vetting measures at Southbank International, but Sir Chris Woodhead, chairman of the governors said that it was “irrelevant” in Vahey’s case as he was not on the sex offender’s register.

Sir Chris said there had never been a complaint against Vahey, although there was one incident where a boy was ill on a trip and Vahey took the boy into his room to look after him. A school investigation subsequently found “nothing untoward”.

McCanns Still Believe - No Death Certificate for Madeleine

Seven Years Later: Madeleine McCann’s Parents Refuse To Apply For Death Certificate, Holding Out Hope For Daughter’s Return.

The seventh anniversary of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann is fast approaching but her parents have not given up hope she’ll be found.

Under British law, Jerry and Kate McCann could can now apply for a Certificate of Presumed Death for their daughter who went missing on May 3, 2007 from a resort in Portugal where the family was vacationing.

Encouraged by new leads into her kidnapping now being worked by Scotland Yard, the couple has no intentions of requesting the certificate though. The little girl’s grandmother Susan Healy tells the Daily Mirror “she could be found.”

Added a spokesman for the grieving parents, “Kate and Gerry are fully aware of the declaration of death. They still believe that Madeleine is alive and are not applying for a certificate proving she is dead. That is the last thing on their minds.”

Considering the quality of police work  done by the Portuguese and the road-blocks preventing Scotland Yard from investigating directly, there is reason to hope. Like the families of those on board Malaysia Flight 370, there is no giving up hope until at least some evidence has been found to infer what happened.

Please pray for Kate and Gerry. Most marriages fail in circumstances like this - please pray that they continue to be strong for each other. And please pray that some resolution will come soon - preferably, Maddy found alive and well. God is big enough to do that!

Illinois School Bus Monitor Charged with Child Sex Offences

COLLINSVILLE, Illinois. (KSDK) – A 76-year-old school bus monitor faces charges of sex abuse and exploitation of a child, according to Collinsville police.

Thomas Hartsoe

Madison County State's Attorney charged Thomas Hartsoe, of Fairmont City, with felonious aggravated criminal sex abuse and sexual exploitation of a child Friday.

According to police, Collinsville School District Unit 10 reported a complaint of inappropriate contact between Hartsoe, who is employed by First Student, and a student. After an investigation, with cooperation from the bus company and school district, police identified Hartsoe as a suspect.

Hartsoe is being held in Collinsville Police Department with bond set at $200,000.

No further information about the specific incident was immediately available.

Collinsville is a city of about 26,000 across the Illinois state line and 12 miles from St Louis, Missouri.

Police continue to investigate and are looking for other potential victims or witnesses involving Hartsoe. If you have any information, you're asked to contact Detective Bud Jeremias at 618-344-2131 extension 5275 or CrimeStoppers at 866-371-8477.

More Ammunition for Cops Investigating Historical VIP Child Sex Abuse Ring

A probe by the Sunday People and investigative website Exaro uncovered evidence the tape is believed to be among a batch of films seized and handed to MI5.

Gateway: Port of Dover where the video was seized

A former Tory cabinet minister was pictured in a video allegedly featuring child sex abuse, it has been claimed.

The tape is believed to be among a batch of films seized by customs officials and handed over to MI5, reports the Sunday People.

No details about it have ever been made public. But the customs officer who seized the haul is said to have identified the ex-minister in the footage.

However, he declined to say whether or not the politician was participating in the alleged child abuse.

A probe by the Sunday People and investigative website Exaro has ­uncovered evidence that the cassette was ­confiscated at Dover in 1982.

A seizure notice shows a customs ­officer took custody of three 8mm films, three video cassettes and an order form.

The notice said the items were “seized as liable to forfeiture upon the grounds that the said goods are indecent or ­obscene articles”.

Friends of the customs officer, now retired, have confirmed he told them this week that he recognised the minister in the film – but would not say anything else after his former bosses reminded him he had signed the Official Secrets Act.

This week the officer was too frightened even to open his front door, and said he was unwilling and unable to comment.

He said: “I am bound by all these regulations until I die.”

The existence of the video is likely to be seized upon by Operation Fernbridge cops investigating claims of a historical VIP sex abuse ring.

Amsterdam: The tape came from Holland

They are understood to have already spoken to the ex-minister about another video that places him at a sex party involving teenage boys three decades ago.

Now they are expected to speak to the customs officer.

The video was seized at Dover’s Eastern Car Terminal along with other child pornography.

It was being brought into Britain from Amsterdam by Russell Tricker, a British-born businessman based in the Dutch capital. He was held for two hours and officials confiscated the tape.

The customs officer then passed the case over to senior managers at Customs and Excise – since reorganised as part of HM Revenue and Customs.

They took no further action against Mr Tricker, and are understood to have passed the tape to MI5.

The seizure notice gave brief details of some of the material, showing one of the videos was titled “GB10”.

A child abuse victim has told Exaro that this video showed boys, some of them “runaways”, who could be ­“ordered” by paedophile clients.

Another video was called “Amsterdam Tramway Museum” and featured images of boys from elsewhere in Europe who could be procured by perverts.

The video started with a few minutes of train footage before turning to ­pornographic images of boys.

Mr Tricker confirmed he was stopped by customs officials when travelling through Dover as a passenger in 1982. But he claimed he did not know what was inside the sealed packages. That's it then. He must be telling the truth - we all carry sealed packages across international borders without knowing what's in them, don't we?

He said: “I have nothing to hide. I was asked to take some brown envelopes to England. They were seized by Customs. I did not know what was inside them.”

Mr Tricker said a business associate had asked him to take the packages into the country and then post them to an address in the UK. And did we get the business associate's name? What business was he in?

Asked whether he was aware of claims that an ex-minister and child sex abuse featured on one of the videos, Tricker denied any knowledge of the content.

“They were just confiscated, and I was allowed to continue my journey. They detained me for two hours,” he said.

Mr Tricker confirmed he was convicted of a child sex offence in the Netherlands in 1992 and jailed for two-and-a-half years, but said he was cleared on appeal and released after five months.

His lawyers were able to show that the boy concerned had carried a false ­identity card and had pretended to be above age, Mr Tricker said. Good grief!

The boy was later shot dead in Amsterdam, he said.

“It is a sad story,” he added.

Tricker denies being a paedophile but confirmed he was a personal friend of Peter Glencross, who was commercial manager of Spartacus International.

At the time, Spartacus International was used to attract new members to the Spartacus Club, an underground network for paedophiles.

Can't Sue Elmo for Child Sex Abuse - Curious Ruling by US Court of Appeals

The U.S. Court of Appeals has dismissed sex abuse suits against Kevin Clash, the puppeteer best known as the voice of Sesame Street's Elmo.

The appeals court concurred with a previous ruling from July 2013, agreeing with a lower court's decision to dismiss the lawsuits.

In late 2012, three individuals accused 53-year-old Clash of sexually abusing them more than 10 years ago, while they were minors.

After the allegations emerged, the Emmy-winning Sesame Workshop puppeteer — who had voiced the high-pitched, fuzzy red character Elmo for 28 years and been featured in the hit 2011 documentary Being Elmo — resigned from his job.

"I am resigning from Sesame Workshop with a very heavy heart. I have loved every day of my 28 years working for this exceptional organization. Personal matters have diverted attention away from the important work Sesame Street is doing and I cannot allow it to go on any longer," he said at the time.

Clash also denied any wrongdoing and stated that any past relationships he had were between consenting adults.

Last July, a judge in New York ruled that the three claims fell out of the state's statute of limitations. The plaintiffs subsequently brought their cases up to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The appeal court's decision, made April 2, said the plaintiffs failed to provide any reason why they were unable to discover their injuries prior to 2012. Really?!! Are you serious? They have to have a reason for not discovering their injuries until now? It was 30 years later before I realized that I had been sexually abused as a child, and there is no way I could have explained that when I did.

But surely, US Court of Appeals judges are familiar with repressed memories evident in most child sex abuse cases. Now all of a sudden the victims have to explain why their memories were repressed? I sure hope they take this to the next level, and I sure hope those judges get some awareness training in child sex abuse - it appears they are woefully ignorant.

A separate lawsuit, filed in Pennsylvania by Clash's first public accuser in 2013, is pending.

Amy, Child Porn Star Seeking $3.4m in Restitution

The notices arrive almost every day. They tell a young woman named Amy, as she is called in court papers, that someone has been charged with possessing child pornography. She was the child.

“It is hard to describe what it feels like to know that at any moment, anywhere, someone is looking at pictures of me as a little girl being abused by my uncle and is getting some kind of sick enjoyment from it,” Amy, then 19, wrote in a 2008 victim impact statement. “It’s like I am being abused over and over and over again.”

Next month, the Supreme Court will consider what the men who took pleasure from viewing Amy’s abuse must pay her.

Images of Amy being sexually assaulted by her uncle are among the most widely viewed child pornography in the world. They have figured in some 3,200 criminal cases since 1998.

Amy is notified through a Justice Department program that tells crime victims about developments in criminal cases involving them. She has the notifications sent to her lawyer. There have been about 1,800 so far.

Her lawyer often files a request for restitution, as a 1994 law allows her to do. Every viewing of child pornography, Congress found, “represents a renewed violation of the privacy of the victims and repetition of their abuse.”

Amy’s losses are in most ways beyond measure, but some of them can be calculated in dollars. She has found it hard to hold down a job. She needs a lifetime of therapy. She has legal bills. Her lawyers say it adds up to about $3.4 million.

The question for the justices is how to allocate that sum among the participants in the sordid marketplace for pictures of her.

Doyle R. Paroline

One of those men is Doyle R. Paroline, who was caught with 280 images of children, including toddlers, being sexually abused. Two of the pictures were of Amy.

The 1994 law allows victims of child pornography to seek the “full amount” of their losses from people convicted of producing, distributing or possessing it, and Amy asked the U.S. District Court in Tyler, Texas, to order Paroline to pay her the full $3.4 million.

Paroline said he owed Amy nothing, arguing that her problems did not stem from learning that he had looked at images of her. Amy’s uncle, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his crimes, bore the brunt of the blame, Paroline said, but was ordered to pay Amy just $6,325.

He added that Amy’s “problematic behavior,” including drinking and troubles at work and school, could have sources other than her “sexual abuse history.”

Paroline was sentenced to two years in prison, but the trial judge, Leonard Davis, did not order him to give Amy anything. The link between Amy’s losses and what Paroline did, Davis said, was too remote.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New Orleans, disagreed and awarded Amy the $3.4 million she sought. Paroline should pay what he could and seek contributions from his fellow wrongdoers if he thought it too much, the court said, relying on the legal doctrine of “joint and several” liability.

“Among its virtues,” the appeals court said, “joint and several liability shifts the chore of seeking contribution to the person who perpetrated the harm rather than its innocent recipient.” Like that's going to work!

In the long run, Amy would not receive more than she deserved. But neither would she have to chase hundreds of men, many of them penniless, for the fractional shares of her misery that they caused.

Paroline said the ruling was deeply unfair. “An award of $3.4 million against an individual for possessing two images of child pornography is punitive and grossly disproportionate to the offense conduct,” he told the Supreme Court. Requiring him to seek payment from his fellow sex offenders, he added, “would create a procedural nightmare.”

Amy’s lawyers countered that it should not be her burden to pursue her abusers over “decades of litigation that might never lead to a full recovery.”

She has received restitution in 180 cases so far, she told the justices, and has recovered a little more than 40 percent of her losses.

The Justice Department took a middle ground before the Supreme Court, saying that Amy deserved something from Paroline, but that $3.4 million was too much. The right amount, the department’s lawyers said, was “somewhere between all or nothing.” Well that really narrows it down. Good job Justice Dept.

They did not specify what Paroline’s share might be, saying the trial court should decide. Amy’s lawyers said they feared that a strict mathematical allocation of responsibility, with each offender paying an equal share, could lead to individual awards of “about $47.”

Emily Bazelon interviewed Amy for an article that ran in The New York Times Magazine in January, before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. She sounded hopeful.

“If I win, that will set everything up for people like me, and that would be so amazing,” Amy said. “I don’t even think there are words for it.”

We certainly hope and pray you win and recover all the proceeds that you need and deserve. This could potentially be a game changer for child pornography.

Six Deviates Arrested in Child Sex and Pornography Ring

Six men were charged today in a lurid sex-abuse ring that reached from Montgomery County more than halfway across the country to Oklahoma.

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, lies just north of Philadelphia, and Buck County lies to the east of Montgomery County.

Each of the men exchanged nude videos over the Internet or engaged in sex acts with a 14-year-old boy identified as Victim No. 1 at a variety of locations in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, according to court papers.

The investigation was launched when the boy's parents found "inappropriate material" on the boy's electronic devices in October and notified Limerick Township police, said Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman.

"This is the type of case where there is significant potential for other abuse victims," said Ferman. "We encourage anyone who might know of other victims to contact us immediately."

Federal  prosecutors filed additional charges against four of the men Apr. 23.

At least five additional underage victims were allegedly targeted by one of the men, according to the District Attorney’s office.


Matthew Krapf, 43, of Collegeville, was arrested Nov. 2 as he departed his home to allegedly meet Victim No. 1 for sex. A search of Krapf’s home turned up thousands of images and videos of child pornography, many of which Krapf allegedly produced himself, Ferman said.

Investigators found evidence of Krapf having sex with four other young teens and exchanging images with a fifth going back to 2005. Krapf was charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, and a myriad of child pornography counts. On Jan. 23, federal prosecutors also charged Krapf on a slew of child porn counts. Krapf is being held on $1 million bail.

Jason “Scotty’ Becktold, 42, of Oklahoma City, another member of the ring, allegedly coerced Victim No. 1 to conceal a camera in the victim's school locker room to record other boys in various states of undress. In addition, Becktold allegedly sent Victim No. 1 underwear through the mail and directed him to make sexually explicit images for him, according to the indictment on federal charges. He was arrested Feb. 3 in Oklahoma, according to a federal indictment.

Christopher Steele, 33, of New Castle, Delaware, was arrested Dec. 13. Steele allegedly traveled to Montgomery County to have sex with Victim No. 1. Investigators allegedly found numerous images of child porn on Steele’s computer and cell phone, according to Ferman. He is charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, disseminating explicit material to a minor, corruption of a minor and other counts. He is being held on $1 million bail.

Paul Gavin Britton, 45, of Dover, Del., was arrested Jan. 10 at his home in Delaware. Investigators said he also traveled to have sex with Victim No. 1. Britton, who was in a long-term relationship with Steele, committed suicide Feb. 6, prosecutors said.

Mark “Wilco” Wilczopolski, 22, of Birdsboro, allegedly exchanged nude images and videos with Victim No. 1. He was arrested in February, charged with disseminating explicit materials and other counts and indicted this week on federal charges.

Glenn Kriczky, 58, of Birdsboro, also exchanged images and videos with Victim No. 1 and was charged similarly and released after posting $10,000 bail.

 “The greatest responsibility of law enforcement is to protect our most vulnerable citizens,” said Ferman. “Keeping children safe is our number one priority.

"This case highlights the dangers our children face when communicating with strangers online. An unfortunate reality of our world is there are adults willing to manipulate and exploit vulnerable youth for their own base motives." Amen!