Head of Charity to Prevent Child Abuse Arrested for Soliciting Child Pornography and Sex With Minors

The chairman of the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict has been arrested for soliciting the rape of multiple children, one as young as two-years-old.

Twenty-two year old Joel Davis was arrested in New York for allegedly exchanging texts with an undercover FBI agent. He is accused of trying to make arrangements for sexual encounters with minors as well as requesting pornographic images of children.

Prosecutors say despite his involvement in the organization, Davis exchanged text messages with undercover agents over the course of several weeks earlier this month.

Davis allegedly told the agents that he was sexually interested in children of all ages. He is accused of sending the agents sexually explicit photographs of infants and toddlers, including some of the children engaged in sex acts with adults.

The 22-year-old allegedly arranged to meet the nine-year-old daughter of one of the undercover agents and with the purported two-year-old daughter of the officer’s girlfriend. He allegedly went into detail in the text messages about what sexual activities he intended to engage in with the children. Prosecutors say Davis repeatedly asked the undercover agent to take naked and sexually explicit pictures and videos of the children and to send them to him. Following his arrest, Davis allegedly admitted to officers that he had abused a 13-year-old boy in the past and that he kept child porn images on his phone.

US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said the charity chief’s actions were ‘unfathomable’ and ‘sickening’.

‘Davis started an organization devoted to stopping sexual violence, while allegedly engaged in the duplicitous behavior of sharing explicit images of infants engaged in sexual activity,’ he said. ‘Davis also allegedly solicited an undercover officer – whom he thought to be a willing participant – to send sexually explicit videos of his nine-year-old daughter, and even to set up a sexual encounter between himself and a two-year-old. ‘The conduct alleged against Joel Davis is as unfathomable as it is sickening, and as this case demonstrates, law enforcement will keep its watchful eye on the darkest corners of the internet to bring predators to justice.’

It isn’t unusual for child predators to use positions of advocacy that engender trust to prey upon innocent children. There are too many examples of pedophiles in jobs that require close contact with trusting children – priests in the Catholic church, school teachers and the now infamous U.S. Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. The stunning documentary An Open Secret also highlighted the scourge of pedophilia in Hollywood circles, particularly in the area of child management and representation.