10-year-old raped in Harlem after meeting man online, NYPD releases photos of suspect



The New York Police Department released photographs of a man in connection to an alleged rape of a 10-year-old girl that met the predator on an online app.

Police said the man met with the girl in person near Third Avenue and East 122nd Street in East Harlem at around 9 p.m. on Jan. 6.

He allegedly raped the girl and then fled on foot.

Paramedics transported the girl to be evaluated at a hospital and receive treatment. She was said to be in stable condition.

The photographs released showed a man in a Nautica hooded sweatshirt and gray sweatpants. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the NYPD, which said the investigation is ongoing and no arrests have been made.

Police did not disclose which online app the child used, but experts have issued warnings to parents to monitor their children's online activity.

In one heinous case, Matthew Christian Locher admitted to searching for victims online who were suffering from mental problems, including suicidal ideation, depression, and anorexia.

“Locher groomed his victims to engage in self-mutilation and instructed a victim struggling with an eating disorder to starve herself, ordering her to film herself cutting her body when she disobeyed him,” read a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors said the child predator ordered one of his underage victims to set her Ohio home on fire in an attempt to kill her parents so that she could run away to California and become his sex slave.

Locher was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison.

While there have been 44 incidents of rape reported to the NYPD so far this year, that number is down from 71 incidents that were reported during the same period last year.

Here's a news video about the incident:

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Illegal immigrant indicted in rape of 10-year-old Ohio girl who went to Indiana for an abortion



The illegal immigrant accused of impregnating a 10-year-old Ohio girl who traveled to Indiana for an abortion was indicted on two counts of rape Thursday by a grand jury in Franklin County, Ohio.

Police apprehended 27-year-old Gerson Fuentes on July 12 after he allegedly confessed to sexually assaulting the young girl on at least two occasions when she was just nine. The girl became pregnant and was taken out of state to Indiana for a medical abortion on June 30, reportedly because she could not obtain one in Ohio under the state's fetal heartbeat law, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Ohio's heartbeat law prohibits abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, around the time when an unborn baby's heartbeat is first detected. The law does not contain exceptions for rape or incest, only for medical emergencies in which the life of the mother is endangered.

The child rape victim's story went viral after pro-choice activists and Democrats, including President Joe Biden, weaponized it to campaign against state abortion restrictions enacted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Many conservatives initially expressed skepticism over the veracity of the story, which was first reported by the Indianapolis Star on July 1. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost was among those who had questioned the story, claiming that his office had not heard a "whisper" of anything like that happening in Ohio.

However, the Columbus Dispatch confirmed the story with reports on Fuentes' arrest and subsequent indictment.

Fuentes is being held in Franklin County jail on $2 million bond. He is a citizen of Guatemala who is living in the United States illegally.

Police have obtained DNA evidence from Fuentes through a search warrant and are comparing it to material collected from the Indianapolis clinic where the girl obtained an abortion, the Dispatch reported.

At a hearing on July 13, Columbus Det. Jeffrey Huhn testified that Fuentes confessed to sexually assaulting the girl on at least two occasions between January and May 12. The two charges of rape are related to those incidents.

Townhall reported that Fuentes was engaged in a romantic relationship with the girl's mother, who is reportedly also pregnant with his child.

A reporter from Telemundo went to the house where law enforcement had arrested Fuentes and briefly spoke to the girl's mother, who claimed the accusations against Fuentes were a "lie."

The maximum sentence for rape of a child under age 13 in Ohio is life in prison without the possibility of parole for 15 years.

Fuentes will appear in court Monday afternoon for arraignment on the indictment and is expected to plead not guilty to the rape charges.

WaPo fact-checker casts doubt on Biden's story about 10-year-old rape victim: 'Very difficult story to check'



President Joe Biden spread a story of a 10-year-old rape victim who crossed state lines to get an abortion. However, some are questioning the veracity of the skeptically-sourced story.

During a gaffe-filled speech at the White House on Friday, Biden introduced an executive order to attempt to protect access to abortion. President Biden also told the story of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who reportedly needed to travel to another state to get an abortion after she was raped.

"Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life," Biden declared.

\u201cBiden claims a 10-year-old was forced to travel across state lines to "terminate the presidency."\u201d
— TheBlaze (@TheBlaze) 1657297723

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the young girl who had purportedly been raped on Friday. White House Real Clear Politics correspondent Phil Wegman asked Jean-Pierre if Biden's Department of Justice had launched an investigation into the 10-year-old rape victim's assailant.

"So I'll say this. Anything to do with the DOJ, that's a – that's a legal component," Jean-Pierre replied. "I would refer you to the DOJ. I don't have more to share on the identity of this young woman or the question that you just asked me. The President spoke to that young woman just to show how extreme the decision on the Dobbs decision was and just how extreme it is now for American public, the American families when there is no exception at all."

Biden cited an Indianapolis Star article that was published on July 1.

The Indianapolis Star depended on a single source for the article – Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist and devout abortion advocate.

"On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio," the article claimed.

The article highlighted how Ohio instituted a trigger law banning abortions after six weeks hours after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The article noted that the girl missed the cutoff by three days.

The Indianapolis Star story garnered international coverage, and the story was picked up by the Daily Mail, The Independent, The Guardian, the Jerusalem Post, and MSNBC's Maddowblog. CNN weaponized the story to confront South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) on her pro-life opinions.

On Saturday, the Washington Post cast doubt on the story.

"The only source cited for the anecdote was Bernard. She’s on the record, but there is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account," wrote WaPo fact-checker Glenn Kessler. "The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained."

Kessler pointed out, "Under Ohio law, a physician, as a mandated reporter under Ohio Revised Code 2151.421, would be required to report any case of known or suspected physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect of a child to their local child welfare or law enforcement agency. So Bernard’s colleague would have had to make such a report to law enforcement at the same time he or she contacted Bernard. Presumably then a criminal case would have been opened."

However, no law enforcement agencies – on local, state, or federal levels – had reported a report or an arrest of the rape suspect of a 10-year-old girl.

Liberal-friendly fact-checker Snopes added, "As of this writing, Bernard had not returned our request for an interview, and we had not been able to independently corroborate the abortion claim."

PJ Media writer Megan Fox raised suspicions about the child rape story in an in-depth Twitter thread posted on July 5.

"A pregnant 10-year-old is evidence of a heinous crime against a child but in every article (and there are SO MANY) there is no mention of criminal investigation, no police involvement, not even a town where this allegedly occurred," Fox wrote.

Also this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) allegedly spread misnformation regarding abortions when she claimed that ectopic pregnancies are illegal when they are reportedly legal in the entire United States.

The Washington Post concluded, "This is a very difficult story to check. Bernard is on the record, but obtaining documents or other confirmation is all but impossible without details that would identify the locality where the rape occurred."

Kessler noted that with multiple international news outlets covering the alleged 10-year-old rape victim story, plus President Biden giving it credence that the story had acquired a "status of a 'fact' no matter its provenance."