A New Hapshire pastor is charged with multiple counts of possession of child pornography after a five-year investigation, according to court documents.
The subject identified as Stephen Bates, of 46 years, is a pastor of the Biblical Baptist Church, and now faces five charges of possession of child sexual abuse material , whose acronym is CSAM. He is currently being held on bail of $3, dollars in cash.
“I think this case is particularly concerning because he is a pastor and someone is involved in the community here,” Brian Trefry, Nashua Police Department Lt. Brian Trefry, told WHDH.
Investigators have been looking at the Bates case since 2016, after the department received 000 complaints from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that alleged a church user uploaded CSAM content from an IP address that led to the church.
In the midst of the investigation, at 2017, detectives contacted Bates directly and asked if he knew to any potential suspect. Bates told the authorities that he did not know any suspects and assured them that the doors of the church are open.
“Pastor Bates was considered a person of interest during previous investigations, but (until on March 15 there was not enough evidence to charge him with any crime,” police said via of a statement.
Two years later, in January 2019, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) of the city of Manchester, New Hampshire, received a referral from HSI Colorado, which was conducting a child sexual exploitation investigation, noting that Instagram hotlines and The Onion Router (Tor) software pointed to the main office of the Biblical Baptist Church, Fox News reported.
Subsequently, the Nashua police gradually received clues that pointed to the church, for which the authorities finally authorized an order federal search warrants and searched the church’s electronic devices, including Bates’ cell phone; however, they found no important clues.
But in 2021, a detective started a covert conversation with a user using a name similar to those that the police received in previous leads, and a conversation came out that included the “sexual exploitation of children”, being from that moment that the investigators linked the accounts to determine that Bates was involved.
It was thus that last March 15, the authorities executed an order search warrant and contacted Bates, who provided them with two flash drives from his back pocket that displayed child sexual abuse content, according to the affidavit.
At this time, the Nashua police are asking anyone who may have information regarding the case contact 603-58-1665 in your line crimes.
With information from Fox News