We reported, Friday afternoon, on the case of substitute teacher Rebecca Coddington of Brown Mills, New Jersey, who has been charged with aggravated sexual assault, among other crimes, for seducing and having a four-year-long affair with a 14-year-old girl. I expressed some surprise that the credentialed media, which have frequently tried to downplay or conceal the sex of victims of such crimes when that information would inform readers that the abuse was homosexual in nature.
Well, here we go again!
Former Bucks County after-school worker sexually assaulted a seventh boy, prosecutors allege
Gerald Spoto, 41, allegedly molested the boy starting in 2021 and recorded hundreds of pornographic images, prosecutors said.
by Robert Moran | Friday, February 9, 2024 | 5:48 PM EST
A 41-year-old Bucks County man already charged with sexually assaulting six boys while he worked for an after-school program and as a babysitter two decades ago now faces a slew of additional charges in connection with a seventh boy who allegedly was victimized just a few years ago.
The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said Friday that Gerald Spoto, of Bristol Township, was charged with an additional three felony counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse and related offenses, including 274 counts of photographing or filming a child sex act, and 275 counts of possession of child pornography.
No, of course the Inquirer did not include the accused’s mugshot!
Spoto was arraigned Friday by District Judge Terrance Hughes, who denied bail, citing public safety concerns and Spoto being a flight risk because he is in the process of selling his home. Spoto has been in custody since his original arrest in December.
Last month, Chief Deputy District Attorney Kristin McElroy argued against reducing Spoto’s bail because he allegedly attempted to adopt a child recently.
While the cited news report from The Philadelphia Inquirer continues to note that the police have found “hundreds of images” on computers belonging to Mr Spoto, of a nude boy who appears to be tween 11-and-13-years of age, and that some showed actual sexual abuse, it was a previous story in the newspaper which gave readers more detail:
All six men said they experienced a similar pattern of abuse at Spoto’s hands. He befriended them through the after-school program, and in some instances was hired by their parents to babysit them.
When left alone with Spoto, usually at his home in Langhorne or while he was driving them in his car, police said, he would grope the boys, perform sex acts on them, and force them to perform sex acts on him. The boys were preteens at the time, some as young as 10.
Emphasis mine.
One victim said Spoto threatened to kill him if he told anyone about the abuse, and said he would “move on” to his younger brother, whom police identified as one of the other victims in the case.The victims also reported other abusive behavior, including being forced to drink alcohol and watch violent videos of people being mutilated. One victim told police that Spoto would invite other men to his home and force the boy to watch as they performed a group sex act.
So, it wasn’t ‘just’ pedophilia, which some quack psychologists tell us has nothing to do with an abuser’s sexual orientation, but Mr Spoto was, allegedly, engaging in some form of homosexual sex with adult men males.
The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office stated that some of Mr Spoto’s victims were as young as 7-years-old, and another victim reported around 50 encounters with the accused between 2000 and 2003, when he was 9-to-11-years old. Would you entrust your child’s care to someone who looked like that?
I apologize to any readers who felt an urge to vomit upon reading that, but Inquirer reporter Vinny Vella didn’t pull any punches, and I believe that readers really do need to know what is being done to children. If the charges are proven — and Mr Spoto is legally innocent until proven guilty — he needs to never again see the sun rise from outside of prison walls.