Investigation · The Sowing Division Hub

Projection

A political movement built a brand on calling its opponents ‘groomers.’ Some of its loudest accusers — a state legislator, a district attorney, a pardoned rioter — are now in prison for crimes against children.

This is not the claim that one party is uniquely full of predators — no honest data supports that, and we do not make it. It is a narrower, harder thing: a set of named individuals who weaponized the accusation of child abuse against others, and are themselves on the criminal record for it. Each case below is anchored to a court document or mainstream report, and labeled by its exact legal status.

The record ↓Where we draw the line

§1 · Summary Brief

What this page is about

‘Groomer’ became the central insult of a political era — aimed at teachers, drag performers, trans people, and Democrats, on the claim that they are the danger to children. This page documents the people who threw that accusation and then landed on the other side of it: public figures who built anti-LGBTQ, ‘protect the children’ brands and were convicted or charged with abusing children themselves.

A South Carolina state representative and Freedom Caucus founder, in federal prison for distributing child sexual abuse material. A Trump-pardoned January 6 rioter, sentenced to life for molesting two children. A district attorney, convicted of possessing that same material. Each is a court record, not a rumor — and each is labeled below by exactly what a court has and has not yet found.

What we are NOT saying

We are not claiming that conservatives, Republicans, or any group abuse children at a higher rate than anyone else — there is no credible evidence for that, and asserting it would be the exact statistical-smear-by-anecdote that ‘groomer’ discourse runs on. Child sexual abuse is committed across every party, church, and profession. Our claim is specific and about hypocrisy: these named people deployed the accusation as a weapon and are themselves on the record. We are also not conflating being gay with harming children — that conflation is the bigotry this page exposes, not a premise of it. And for anyone below who has been charged but not convicted, the charges are allegations; they are presumed innocent.

The record, in order

9 entries · scroll →

Every dated event on this page, assembled chronologically. The page may cover events in a different order for the narrative; this is the straight timeline.

§2 · The Record

The accusers, and their own records

The federal baseline comes first. Then the convictions — graded FACT — and note how many held public trust, and how recent it is: a state legislator, a judge, a district attorney, a party-endorsed candidate, then a charged police chief and councilman, nearly all within roughly the past year. After that, the cases still charged but not tried — each a documentedallegation, with the presumption of innocence stated. The last entry reads the pattern — graded SOME SMOKE, and labeled as a reading, not a measurement.

Start with the data: the government’s own numbers say the typical offender is a white, U.S.-citizen man — not the caricature the panic sells.

FACT

Before the anecdotes, the baseline. In fiscal year 2023, of the 1,408 people sentenced in federal court for child-pornography offenses, the U.S. Sentencing Commission reports that 98.8% were men, 77.1% were White, 96.2% were United States citizens, and 71.2% had little or no prior criminal record; their average age was 41. The person the federal system actually sentences for these crimes looks like a middle-aged white American man with a clean record — not the immigrant, the trans person, or the drag performer the ‘groomer’ panic points at (96.2% U.S. citizens is the tell: the loudest warning is about the border). Precise framing, because this cuts both ways: this is FEDERAL sentencing for a specific set of offenses, largely child-pornography cases — most child sexual abuse is prosecuted in state courts and is not in this dataset — and white people are a majority of the population, so 77% is an over-representation in this category, not proof that any race is uniquely dangerous. The honest point is not ‘white men are the predators.’ It is that the panic is aimed away from where the documented offenders actually are.

U.S. Sentencing Commission — Quick Facts: Child Pornography Offenses, FY2023 (98.8% men; 77.1% White; 96.2% U.S. citizens; 71.2% little/no criminal history; avg. age 41)

A ‘family values’ legislator who fought LGBTQ rights is in federal prison for child sexual abuse material.

FACT

Robert John ‘RJ’ May III — a former South Carolina state representative and founding member of the House Freedom Caucus who, by the accounts of outlets across the spectrum, built his reputation on ‘family values’ and opposition to LGBTQ+ rights — pleaded guilty to five counts of distributing child sexual abuse material and was sentenced on January 14, 2026 to more than 17 years in federal prison. Prosecutors said he shared hundreds of files; he told the court he had lived ‘a double life.’ This is the pattern at its cleanest: the man who cast LGBTQ people as the threat to children is the one a federal judge sentenced for exactly that.

Two January 6 rioters Trump pardoned turned up in child-abuse cases — one sentenced to life.

FACT

Andrew Paul Johnson, 45, of Brooksville, Florida, was convicted by a jury of molesting two children and sentenced on March 5, 2026 to life in prison. Johnson had stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was convicted for it, and then received a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. According to a Hernando County arrest affidavit, he told one victim he expected $10,000 for being a pardoned January 6 defendant and would put the child in his will. And he is not the only one: David Daniel, another January 6 rioter pardoned by Trump, agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of sexual exploitation of a minor and possession of child sexual abuse material — and per court filings, investigators uncovered those crimes while examining his January 6 case, meaning the prosecution the pardon erased was the very thread that exposed him. NPR reports that dozens of pardoned rioters have since faced fresh legal trouble; two of them are child-exploitation cases, which makes this a pattern, not an anomaly.

A ‘law and order’ prosecutor was convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material.

FACT

Kevin Etherington, a former First Assistant District Attorney in Payne County, Oklahoma, was convicted by a Stillwater jury on March 5, 2026 of counts related to child sexual abuse material, and on May 8, 2026 was sentenced to 20 years in the custody of the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. The prosecutor whose job was to put such offenders away was convicted as one — the same inversion, from a different seat of ‘protecting’ the public.

A party-endorsed candidate pleaded guilty to fifteen child sexual abuse material felonies.

FACT

Ernest McCarthy, 84, a multiple-time Lucas County (Ohio) Republican Party-endorsed candidate who ran for Ohio Senate and Toledo City Council, pleaded guilty to 15 second-degree felony charges involving child sexual abuse material — including images of children as young as two — and was sentenced to 20 to 21 years in prison. He carried a party endorsement to voters while producing this material; the plea is his own.

A Florida pastor, a Utah judge, and a California MAGA poster — three more convictions.

FACT

Three more convictions across three states. Jonathan Edward Elwing, 45, pastored Palm View Baptist Church in Palmetto, Florida, and posted anti-LGBTQ ‘real Christian’ content casting the movement as idolatry; a jury found him guilty of 12 charges — capital sexual battery, lewd and lascivious molestation, and the production and possession of child sexual abuse material — and he received multiple life sentences. Kevin Robert Christensen, a former Box Elder County, Utah judge listed as a Republican on his voter registration, pleaded guilty in April 2026 to enticing a minor and two counts of dealing in materials harmful to a minor, in a case that had opened with multiple felony counts. Jason V. Esparza, 60, of Huntington Beach, California — a self-described Trump supporter whose posts mocked ‘socialist Democrats’ — was convicted on 13 felony counts and sentenced to 93 years to life after prosecutors proved he groomed women to babysit children as young as four and arranged for a four-year-old to be drugged and brought to a motel to be assaulted.

Still before the courts: an indicted police chief, a councilman, a party chair, and a church volunteer — charged, presumed innocent.

FACT

These are charges and indictments, not convictions, and each defendant is presumed innocent. Chad Essert, the Bethel, Ohio police chief, was indicted by a Clermont County grand jury on 70 felony counts of sexual battery and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, over conduct alleged from 2005–2010 when he was a Young Marines instructor. Kevin Hedgpeth, the Hanahan, South Carolina Mayor Pro Tem, faces a 23-count federal indictment including sex trafficking of a minor and production of child sexual abuse material. Hunter Rivera, then chairman of the Weld County, Colorado Republican Party, was arrested in a sheriff’s sting on suspicion of soliciting a child prostitute and internet luring, and resigned. Doyle Gene Hodge II, a church volunteer in Polk County, Texas (widely mislabeled online as a ‘minister’), is charged with criminal solicitation of a minor and continuous sexual abuse of a child. We name them because the charging documents are public and the offices they held are public trusts — not as a verdict, which only a court can render.

It is not only the officials — five rank-and-file accusers, each charged, each on a local docket.

FACT

The pattern reaches past officeholders. The activist archive Reich Wing Watch has catalogued many rank-and-file cases pairing a person’s own ‘groomer’/anti-LGBTQ posting with a child-sex charge; rather than republish that roster, we verified a handful to the local newsroom or the arresting agency and list them for what they are — charges, not convictions, each defendant presumed innocent. In Dubuque, Iowa, Warren J. Meyer, 57, faces three counts of second-degree sexual abuse and has pleaded not guilty. In Nevada, Missouri, Jason Gayman was arrested on a child-molestation charge after a child under 12 was allegedly lured with candy at a church potluck. In DeLand, Florida, the Volusia County Sheriff says a search of Trent Prather’s devices turned up more than 42,000 illicit files, and he faces 20 counts. In Carson City, Nevada, Marcus Marchegger, 60, faces multiple felonies after investigators reported more than 500 abuse files, some depicting children under 10. In Wichita Falls, Texas, Louis Dean Noey, 63, was booked on aggravated sexual assault and continuous sexual abuse of a child after two siblings, ages 6 and 9, came forward. In each case the record of the man’s public rhetoric is his own posts as surfaced by that archive; the criminal charge is reported by a local outlet or the arresting agency.

Verdict: the accusation was, for these accusers, a mirror — but it is a pattern of individuals, not a verdict on a party.

SOME SMOKE

Read the confirmed cases together and a pattern is hard to miss: people who made ‘groomer’ and ‘pedophile’ into political weapons turning up, again and again, as the ones a court convicts. We grade the throughline SOME SMOKE, not FACT, on purpose, and the distinction matters. What is FACT is each conviction and each indictment, individually. What is a READING — the part we label — is the psychology of projection, and any suggestion that this says something about a whole movement’s rate of offending. It does not, and we will not claim it does. The honest, provable point is smaller and sharper: the loudest accusers are not exempt from the accusation, and several of them have earned it in court.

Grift Grinders: the Sowing Division hub — how moral panics are manufactured and aimed

§3 · Where We Draw the Line

A pattern, disciplined by the record

We do not count bodies to smear a group. A list of offenders who share a party proves nothing about that party’s rate — every large group produces such a list. We make the hypocrisy claim about named accusers, not the statistical claim about a population.
Convicted and charged are different words. The four anchors are convictions or guilty pleas. The rest are indictments and arrests, labeled as such, with the presumption of innocence stated. We do not blur the line to lengthen the list.
We credit the archive, and verified underneath it. The activist archive Reich Wing Watch has catalogued hundreds of such cases — people who publicly branded others ‘groomers’ or pedophiles, or built anti-LGBTQ ‘protect the children’ brands, then turned up on a child-sex charge or conviction — pairing each subject’s own posts with the charging document. We do not take that count on faith or republish it wholesale; we independently verified the examples we feature here against the court record or the local newsroom, and corrected the labels the memes got wrong (a Texas church volunteer, not a ‘minister’). The scale is theirs to claim; the handful here is ours to vouch for.
Being gay is not in evidence here. This page is about people who harmed or are charged with harming children, and about the rhetoric they aimed at others. It says nothing about anyone’s sexuality, because equating the two is the slander we are documenting, not repeating.

§4 · Why It Matters

Who the panic actually protects

The ‘groomer’ panic is sold as child protection, but it aims almost entirely at people who are not abusing children — teachers, librarians, trans adults, drag performers — while the machinery of real protection (mandatory reporting, background checks, believing kids) gets no such campaign. The cases here suggest what the panic actually does: it launders suspicion onto the innocent and away from the accuser. A moral panic pointed at the wrong people is not a mistake in a child-safety strategy; it is the opposite of one. The sowing-division hub is about exactly this: fear manufactured and aimed, for power.

And the misdirection carries a cost that is not hypothetical. In 2026 a three-year-old girl who crossed the border with her mother was separated from her and held in federal immigration custody for roughly five months — even though her father, a lawful permanent resident, was available to take her — and, her family alleges in a lawsuit, was sexually abused in a foster placement while in that custody (PBS NewsHour; NBC News). An enforcement apparatus that sells itself as protecting children from predators kept a toddler from a willing parent and, the suit says, delivered her to one. That is the panic’s logic followed to its end: aimed at the wrong threat, it fails the real one.

§5 · FAQ

Questions worth taking seriously

Aren't you just doing the 'groomer' smear in reverse?

No — and the difference is the whole point. The ‘groomer’ smear takes an innocent group (LGBTQ people, teachers) and imputes a crime to them with no evidence. We do the opposite: we name specific individuals with actual convictions or indictments on the public record, and we explicitly refuse the population-level claim that any group offends more. We’re documenting proven hypocrisy of named people, not imputing guilt to a class.

Why include people who are only charged, not convicted?

Because an indictment of a police chief or a councilman is itself a public act, taken by a grand jury or prosecutor, and it’s newsworthy on its own. We label those cases as charges, state the presumption of innocence, and keep them separate from the convictions — which is exactly the line the ‘groomer’ rhetoric erases when it treats an accusation as a conviction.

Does the Trump pardon really belong in a child-abuse story?

In Andrew Paul Johnson’s case, yes — it’s documented and material. He was convicted for Jan. 6, pardoned, and then convicted of molesting two children; per the arrest affidavit he even invoked his pardoned status to a victim. The pardon is why he was free, and NPR reports dozens of pardoned rioters have since faced new charges. That’s a fact about the clemency, reported by AP and NPR, not a rhetorical flourish.

§6 · Standing Invitation

If you are named on this page

If you are named on this page, or are a party materially affected by the claims made here, and you wish to respond, correct the record, or add context, use the Contact page. Responses are published verbatim alongside the original claim, with the sender identified and the date of receipt. The channel stays open for the life of the page.

This site aggregates and grades a record that other outlets and primary sources have already put on the record. Every FACT-graded claim above is sourced to court filings, government reports, sworn whistleblower disclosures, published investigative journalism, or named-source statements. The citations are the accountability mechanism; this section is how you get on the record too.

§7 · Sources

What this page is about

The record, in order

The accusers, and their own records

Start with the data: the government’s own numbers say the typical offender is a white, U.S.-citizen man — not the caricature the panic sells.

A ‘family values’ legislator who fought LGBTQ rights is in federal prison for child sexual abuse material.

Two January 6 rioters Trump pardoned turned up in child-abuse cases — one sentenced to life.

A ‘law and order’ prosecutor was convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material.

A party-endorsed candidate pleaded guilty to fifteen child sexual abuse material felonies.

A Florida pastor, a Utah judge, and a California MAGA poster — three more convictions.

Still before the courts: an indicted police chief, a councilman, a party chair, and a church volunteer — charged, presumed innocent.

It is not only the officials — five rank-and-file accusers, each charged, each on a local docket.

Verdict: the accusation was, for these accusers, a mirror — but it is a pattern of individuals, not a verdict on a party.

A pattern, disciplined by the record

Who the panic actually protects

Questions worth taking seriously

Aren't you just doing the 'groomer' smear in reverse?

Why include people who are only charged, not convicted?

Does the Trump pardon really belong in a child-abuse story?

If you are named on this page

The record

Help us fill these lines.