Free Republic

Former Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries and two others were arrested Tuesday as part of a criminal investigation into the alleged sex trafficking of more than a dozen victims, according to the FBI and federal prosecutors. Jeffries, his partner Matt Smith and a third man, Jim Jacobson, are accused of operating an international sex trafficking and prostitution business that recruited young men for parties in the U.S. and abroad, according to a 16-count indictment. The former retail executive and Smith relied on their vast financial resources, Jeffries' power as the CEO of Abercrombie, and numerous people, including Jacobson and...

LANCASTER COUNTY, Pa. — A German man is charged with having sex with a minor in Lancaster County. Police said Erik Weidling, 20, traveled to East Donegal Township from Germany to have sex with a 15-year-old girl multiple times between Feb. 29 and March 8. A criminal complaint alleges that Weidling knew the girl's age. Police said he was aware of her school schedule and her mother's work schedule, and he would come to the victim's home after her mother went to work. Weidling is facing charges that include involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory sexual assault and unlawful contact with...

A multipart investigation by The Wall Street Journal has revealed prominent people who met multiple times with Jeffrey Epstein. The Journal’s reporting, based on thousands of pages of emails and schedules largely from 2013 to 2017, also provides new details about how often or where people met with Epstein, and the kinds of favors Epstein did for them. It shows Epstein had contacts with an array of powerful people long after he was a registered sex offender. He had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. He was arrested again in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges,...

A 14-year-old girl who’d gone missing after running away from home last month was found inside the barracks of Marine Corp Camp Pendleton, according to authorities. An officer of the U.S. Marine Corps was taken into custody in San Diego in connection with allegations of sex trafficking involving the minor. The girl, who has learning disabilities, ran away from home on June 9. Her grandmother reported her missing to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department a few days later. “The grandmother reported to deputies that the teen had previously run away before, but always returned home quickly,” Melissa Aquino, SDSO’s...

House Democrats appear to be unconcerned about the optics of shutting down an effort to increase penalties for child sex traffickers in an election year. On Wednesday, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee unanimously shot down such a measure.

It seems every other day I read a news article or police report of a child predator that comes from the ranks of so-called "pillars of the community." There are people, men, and women, preying on children in our communities. That statement reaks of alarmism, but is a reality. A reality that we have to confront head-on. The more I delve into this subject, the more I realize these predators come from every walk of life. Child sexual predators and traffickers are not exactly the same, but they have similarities; they prey on children, and they come from every walk...

Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire recently published a piece citing the need to involve government intervention in the fight against hardcore pornography. The counterargument to his assertion is that it’s a problem for parents to handle, not government, and that pornography is protected under the First Amendment as a matter of freedom of expression. These counterpoints ignore the truth that parents alone cannot handle a public health crisis and that pornography is obscenity, which is not protected by the Constitution. However, federal obscenity laws have not been enforced for the past 10 years, resulting in the National Center on...

A damning report earlier this year into the Rotherham sex abuse scandal found police and council bosses turned a blind eye to the exploitation for fear of being labelled racist. Some victims were gang raped, while others were groomed and trafficked across northern England by groups of mainly Asian men. The report by Prof Alexis Jay, the former chief inspector of social work in Scotland, said senior officials were responsible for “blatant” failures that saw victims treated with contempt, ignored or categorised as “out of control” when they asked for help. More than 6,000 children across England have been reported...

Craigslist has made tens of millions of dollars off sex ads, which have facilitated child sex trafficking, and part of that money is in Democratic campaign coffers. President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.), Sen. Barbara Boxer (D.-Calif.) and Sen. Al Franken (D.-Minn.) are among the politicians who have accepted the $83,800 in donations that Craigslist founder Craig Newmark donated to Democrats.

ELDORADO, TEX. — The Yearning For Zion ranch a few miles west of nowhere was built to keep the secrets of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints hidden from prying eyes. But the church's days of splendid isolation and impenetrable secrecy – only the top fringe of the temple's white limestone walls visible from a distant rural road at the edge of the 1,700-acre spread – are rapidly ending. The Texas Rangers raid of the secluded ranch in early April led to sensational allegations of grooming underage girls for marriage and sexual abuse. And the discovery...