A South Carolina Fox News reporter, Matt Vereen, has been charged with the possession and solicitation of child pornography.
The 28-year-old Columbia WACH FOX 57 weekend sports anchor had in his possession nude and sexually suggestive footage of 11 to 13-year-old girls.
A search of Vereen’s Apple laptop produced an image of a female in said age range along with two videos. The arrest warrants note that he used a redacted social media platform to acquire the noted contraband via means of “soliciting” and “purchasing”.
The presenter, who had been working for Fox News for three years, was caught in a joint operation by the Department of Homeland Security, the Columbia Police Department, and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force who traced him with the help of Gmail, Apple, and data from other redacted sources.
He was detained at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center but was given $40,000 bail. The conditions of his release are that he does not use the internet and social media for anything other than work. His employer, however, has since placed him on administrative leave.
Fox confirmed as much in a statement saying:
“Sports reporter Matt Vereen has been arrested and charged with three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, according to Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force investigators with the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office.”
“WACH FOX News understands the severity of these allegations and Vereen has been placed on suspension pending an investigation.”
It refused to divulge any other information saying instead: “As this is a personnel matter, the station will not be commenting further at this time.”
Vereen’s LinkedIn page notes that before his tenure at Fox, he served as a sports reporter and at KOLR, a Springfield, Missouri news station.
Should Vereen be found guilty, he could spend a maximum of 30 years in prison.
The 26-year-old organization, ICAC, which played a role in a bust claims it has 61 task forces nationally along with connections to more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies and more than 675,700 trained members.
Its website notes that since its inception, it has reviewed over 844,600 complaints of sexual exploitation among children which has thus far resulted in 89,400 arrests.
Its South Carolina branch notes that 72% of 13-year-olds possess smartphones and spend an average of seven hours per day on them.
The connection between the two (smartphones and teens) creates a vulnerability, according to a United Kingdom movement for delaying the use of smart devices among minors.
Said organization, kidsfornow.org, states:
“Smartphones and social media provide opportunities for predators to make contact with your child. Predators can make contact through online games and social media, often using fake profiles pretending to be children themselves. They gain your child’s trust and threaten them into performing sexual acts on camera.”
“Unfortunately, even parents who make every effort to protect their children, have now been put in a situation where we have to explain these risks to them from an age when they are far too young to understand, to prepare them for the worst, so that they will talk to us when this occurs.”
A key enabler of these scenarios, according to said movement, is children owning smartphones “unnecessarily”.
I agree with the United Kingdom movement for delaying the use of smart devices among minors. A kid might need a cell phone to contact home or a parent elsewhere, but they do not need a smart phone at all. Nor do they need any sort of function on their phone other than phone service and maybe text messages. IMO children these days are given too many unwarranted privileges. They are also abusing said privileges, and proving by that abuse that they lack the maturity and responsibility everyone needs to develop as they grow from child to teen to adult.
These scumbags seem to be everywhere. I hope they lock him up for the MAX!