A Kiwi psychologist living in the US has been charged with possessing and distributing child exploitation material.<\/p>\n
Jeremy Brian Tacon was arrested last month along with a doctor and attorney in Detroit amid a nationwide crackdown led by the FBI.<\/p>\n
The 51-year-old is New Zealand born, but moved to the US where he has been working for about a decade.<\/p>\n
A statement by the US Attorney’s Office said Tacon had been charged with receiving, possessing and distributing child sex abuse material.<\/p>\n
The FBI executed search warrants at the home of Tacon and attorney Joshua Ronnebaum in November, where it seized numerous media storage devices from the residence which allegedly contained child exploitation material and discussions between the men which expressed their sexual interest in children.<\/p>\n
An arrest warrant was then filed on November 13.<\/p>\n
The arrests also led to the FBI to Lincoln Erickson, a doctor, who also had child exploitation material on his phone.<\/p>\n
Tacon and Ronnebaum were both charged on December 16 in a nine-count indictment with the receipt, distribution, and possession of child exploitation of child exploitation material.<\/p>\n
On December 17, Erickson was charged with the receipt of child exploitation material.<\/p>\n
The US Attorney’s Office said all three men have been detained, pending trial.<\/p>\n
The arrests were part of Operation Relentless Justice, with US Attorney Jerome Gorgon saying: “There is a special place in hell waiting for the predators who hurt our children.”<\/p>\n
“In the meantime, we will work with our compatriots to stop these evil criminals.”<\/p>\n
The operation has led to over 205 child victims being located and the arrest of over 293 child sexual abuse offenders, the US Attorney’s Office said.<\/p>\n
Attorney General Pamela Bondi said: “We will not allow evil criminals who prey on children to evade justice.”<\/p>\n
“Our federal agents have worked tirelessly alongside our state and local partners to track down these vile predators, and now our prosecutors will ensure they receive severe punishments to match their horrific crimes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Kiwi psychologist living in the US has been charged with possessing and distributing child exploitation material. Jeremy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[67,42,43,64,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-241933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-north-america","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}