Mother of Sex Abuse Victims Accuses 250+ of Pedophilia in Suit
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May 30, 2013 6:00am
A Maryland mother has filed a federal lawsuit against more than 250 people, calling them pedophiles after videos of her two daughters being sexually molested by their father and a co-conspirator were exchanged and circulated as part of a child porn series.
The suit, filed Monday in a Baltimore federal court, accuses 266 defendants – 84 of them named, while 182 are listed as “John Doe.”
The suit claims that some of the defendants received child porn containing the unnamed defendant’s daughters, who were 4 and 6 at the time, being “violently sexually assaulted by their father and a co-conspirator in 2008.”
Video and images from the sexual acts were packaged together and posted to the Internet, and were widely circulated under the series names “DKNY” and “YKND,” according to the complaint.
Attorney Steve Kelly, who is representing the plaintiff, told ABCNews.com that the middle-class family living in Maryland’s Ann Arundel County was at home in 2008 when federal agents showed up.
“The FBI burst in with full force and ripped the kids out of the house, and took the father off in handcuffs,” he said. “And that’s when the mother discovered this was happening.”
Of the defendants, 80 have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to receipt of child pornography, while four have been charged with receipt of child pornography, according to the complaint, while another 182 have been identified through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s Child Victim Identification Program, but not criminally charged.
Kelly said that the National Child Victim Identification Program was able to provide a list of names in which the defendant’s girls’ images were matches with images off defendants’ computers.
“Some of these corresponded with federal cases,” he said. “Some we don’t know. There are 186 John Does, where we don’t know the names. We’ve identified 84 of these guys. We have college professors, patent holders, clergy, law enforcement officials, military.”
The children’s father, who their mother does not want named to protect the privacy of her girls, and the co-conspirator pleaded guilty to federal charges relating to the case and were sentenced to 45 and 36 years in prison, respectively.
The complaint is asking for $8 million in compensatory damages and $24 million in punitive damages from each defendant.
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