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XPost: alt.politics.homosexuality, alt.california, alt.politics.democrats
The Walt Disney Company has long presented itself as the voice for
America’s children. According to company lore, the animation studio
was founded by a wise and kindly father figure, and its theme parks
are “the happiest place on Earth” for kids. In recent weeks, the
company has entered the political debate about Florida’s Parental
Rights in Education legislation and sought to establish itself as a
moral arbiter on children’s education and sexuality.
But behind its meticulously curated self-image, Disney has had a
long-standing problem with child predators gaining employment within
the company and exploiting minors. In 2014, reporters at CNN
published a bombshell six-month investigation that discovered at
least 35 Disney employees had been arrested for sex crimes against
children, attempting to meet minors for sex, and possession of child pornography over the previous eight years.
The stories are horrifying. In one case, police set up a sting
operation that nabbed three Disney employees who believed they were
soliciting sex from minors. Robert Kingsolver, who oversaw ride
repairs at Disney World, enticed someone he thought was a 14-year-
old girl for sex in a private residence. Joel Torres, another Disney
employee, allegedly brought condoms with him to have sex with a 14-
year-old child. And Allen Treaster, a concierge at the park’s Animal
Kingdom Lodge, went to meet a 14-year-old boy to “fulfill a fantasy”
of being a “Big Teddy Bear for younger chaser.” In all three cases,
the men were met and then arrested by police, who had set up the
trap to catch child predators in the Orlando region. Kingsolver
denied the charges; Treaster admitted that he had molested a 15-
year-old boy a few weeks prior to his arrest.
Other Disney employees were found to have committed child sex crimes
using the Internet. According to police and court records, custodial
manager Cedric Cuthbert was caught downloading child porn on a
Disney work computer, giftshop employee Paul Fazio was convicted for downloading “multiple scenes of nude prepubescent children engaging
in sexual activity with adults,” and security guard William
Marrero-Maldonado was charged with seven counts of promoting videos
and photographs of the “sexual performance of a child.”
Why Disney? Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, who oversaw some of
these investigations, explained why child predators would choose the
Magic Kingdom as a place of employment. “Wherever you find children,
you’ll find sexual predators,” he told reporters. Most employees
“work at Disney because they want a good, stable job for a great
company, but there is always a few that are there because they can
see children. They can live in a child’s world.”
Disney has claimed to have “extensive measures in place” to provide
a safe environment for children, but there are reasons to doubt it.
Even after the CNN report, Disney has seen a steady stream of
employees caught in the dragnet for child predators. In 2019, police
arrested a Disney cruise “youth host” for molesting a ten-year-old
boy in the ship’s “Oceaneer Kids Lab” and, later that year, arrested another Disney cruise employee for raping a girl “over 100 times” at
her home starting when she was 11 years old. (The charges regarding
the molestation of the ten-year-old boy were later dropped when the
parents did not want to bring the child in for testimony at trial.)
Since then, three Disney employees have been arrested for soliciting
sex with minors, two have been arrested on 40 total counts of child pornography, and four more were arrested earlier this month in a
sting operation targeting “human trafficking, child predators, and prostitution.”
Even worse, despite its crystal-clean image, Disney has come under
fire for failing to report abuse. In 2014, after a crewmember on the
Disney Dream cruise ship was caught on security cameras molesting an 11-year-old girl, Disney authorities failed to report the crime
until after the ship had left port, which allowed the man to evade
arrest. When one security officer protested, Disney authorities
allegedly told her to “keep your mouth shut” about the crime.
Moreover, according to advocates associated with the International
Cruise Victims organization, Disney’s trade-association lobbyists
had worked to oppose and then water down federal legislation that
would have required stringent safety and reporting protocols for
sexual abuse on cruise ships.
Instead of joining the drumbeat of fashionable left-wing sexual
theories and promoting gender ideology in elementary school
classrooms, a more productive campaign for Disney executives would
be to identify and remove the predators from within their company’s
ranks.
https://www.city-journal.org/disneys-child-predator-problem
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