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Northeastern admissions counselor arrested on child-porn charges
By adamg on Wed, 11/22/2023 - 3:14pm
A Dorchester man who worked at Northeastern advising prospective students at prep schools in the Back Bay and Dedham was arrested today on charges he saved explicit videos of men raping toddlers and other young children from Zoom sessions with other child-porn watchers, according to documents unsealed in federal court in Boston today.
Beau Christopher Benson, 35, was charged with possession and receipt of child pornography, the US Attorney's office reports.
Benson was turned in by another participant in pedophilic Zoom calls, who had earlier pleaded guilty to similar charges and who was awaiting sentencing, according to an affidavit by a Boston Police detective working with the Boston FBI office's child exploitation and human trafficking task force. The task force began an investigation into Benson after investigators met with that other man in April.
According to the US Attorney's office:
It is alleged that Benson recorded his participation in the chat rooms and saved the recordings - which featured videos of CSAM [child sexual abuse material] and conversations between Benson and others about the CSAM - to his social media account. It is alleged that approximately 15 video files depicting CSAM were found saved in his Dropbox. It is further alleged that a cybertip identified Benson as an online user who had uploaded two files containing CSAM to a Dropbox account. Specifically, the files allegedly depicted children who appear to be approximately two to four years old.
According to his Northeastern Web page, which the university has deleted, but which is still available in Google Cache, Benson served as director of global enrollment strategies, focused on advising prospective students in general at the Commonwealth School in the Back Bay, Noble and Greenough in Dedham, two schools aimed at foreign students in New York City and students more generally in eastern Canada, Turkey and Switzerland.
Innocent, etc.
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| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Complete affidavit (with explicitly detailed descriptions of the videos) | 246.02 KB |
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Comments
WTF
Disgusting
Let’s wait and see. I know it
Let’s wait and see. I know it’s not a thing, but he just seems so unlikely.
Who is likely?
A much younger member of my Boy Scout and fellow Eagle Scout was arrested and convicted on child porn charges in his early 20s. White upper middle class from a doctor family. It’s a mental illness. They should be punished, but if you see a child and think sexual thoughts you have a disease.
No excuse
Cruelty isn't mental illness. It's a choice.
That's an odd juxtaposition of claims
It's both a mental illness *and* should be punished?
In my view, pedophilia is a mental illness rather than a choice, and should be *treated*. If it escalates to child molestation, well... *that's* a choice and should be punished.
(Yes, I know that we don't really have good treatment options for pedophilia. And that sucks. But it's not like punishing people will fix it either.)
[EDIT: typo]
Consuming CSAM directly
Consuming CSAM directly supports its creation by providing a market. Any dealing in CSAM should be punished, not just when a person escalates to assaulting children themselves.
It is
But it’s a pretty complex issue and when those people act on those urges they need to be punished.
Really?
What makes him so 'unlikely?' Take a couple of minutes and read the affidavit.
ugh ugh ugh
I couldn't get through the whole affidavit. Those poor babies.
Yeahhhhh
Reading that was... disturbing.
It's always unlikely.
Someone who I worked with for ten years and gave me job references was arrested and convicted of child porn charges. It was just as "unlikely" then, but when I saw the indictment I knew he did it and a few "funny" things now made sense. I hope I never have to see that piece of shit again.
It's _always_ unlikely, child
It's _always_ unlikely, child molesters are thankfully rare. Or maybe you think it's extra unlikely because, what, he had a full-time office job and was able to get a reasonable professional headshot taken?
"Likely?"
Does someone need to be a slouching man with greasy hair and a trenchcoat, maybe some stubble, in order to be a pedophile? This is a mental illness, as Matt said (even if I disagree with their other claim) and can occur in anyone of any age, gender, or -- indeed -- appearance.
Seems unlikely?
How?
Did you read the affidavit?
Child molesters are hiding in plain sight amongst us. They are doctors, coaches, businessmen, etc. sure. Innocent until proven…but that affidavit is not only damaging for him, it is absolutely disgusting. Bullet to the head is my unpopular opinion.
Why do students at prep
Why do students at prep schools need advising help from Northeastern? Shouldn't the university be spending money to help students at underprivileged schools, to put them on an equal footing with prep school students?
Something doesn't make sense
Something doesn't make sense about the description of his role at Northeastern.
it's really recruiting
because those students will pay full freight, including the foreign prep school students.
Dear NEU Huskies
First David Scondras, now this dude, really?
Scondras Stuck To Teenagers
F'ing scumbag nevertheless.
So disturbing
Any person that sexually abuses a child should be tortured in my opinion.
No child should suffer from the darkness of one's soul.
No decent person should be
No decent person should be asked to torture prisoners, no matter what crime they have been convicted of, and nobody who likes the idea of torture should be in charge of anything.
Nah
Even the most decent person may change their mind on the level of punishment deserved after reading what this monster is accused of doing to very young children.
not only is torture immoral, it doesn't work
It doesn't work as a deterrent (these scum already know that if they're caught and convicted, it's a long prison sentence). It doesn't change the past so the horrible crimes didn't happen. All you'd be doing is traumatizing cops or prison staff, and letting yourself feel good about getting revenge on a child molester.
There's also a lot of evidence that torture doesn't work to get information: you can make people talk, but you can't make them tell the truth, especially when that truth is "I don't know," or they already told you the truth but you didn't believe them. Most people will say whatever they think will make you stop torturing them--and then you're off on a wild goose chase, because the same people who won't believe a suspect who says "I didn't do it" or "I don't know who's smuggling guns" will turn around and believe him when he says "Enough! I'll talk" and then gives them a name.
Torture is immoral
If we abandon morality when it feels right to us, by what virtue can we ever judge others?
Congratulations
You are just as fucking disturbing as this guy we are talking about.
Seek help.
Typical
Do you ever have a thoughtful response other than insulting people?
Every reply from you is just an insult. You should really seek some help for your anger.
On the subject of anger
On the subject of anger, and seeking help for same, that might be good advice for someone who thinks that torture is a valid method of dispensing justice OR deterring crimes.
Another gentrifying blow-in sullying the name of the city
He's not a "Dorchester man." or a "Hub man." You have to earn that by getting robbed or beaten when you were in middle or high school in Boston, or doing it to someone else.
He's from Jenkintown, PA a suburb of Philadelphia via NYU.
Ten year minimum mandatory for child porn, I believe. He might actually get more, a lot more if he was a producer.
One problem with the internet: in the past, these pervs were isolated. It was difficult, risky, almost impossible to find like-twisted pervs in the real world. I say almost impossible because NAMBLA pre-dates the internet.
Now these pervs can find a "community" with the ease of doing a Google or Tor search. So we have "communities" of child pornographers, molesters, and even cannibals. Which the affidavit describes at length.
So BPD can also be sworn Deputy US Marshals? That is very cool. I hope they get an extra badge with the five-pointed star, too.
Interesting info about Dropbox and 18 U.S. Code § 2258A mandatory reporting. Indicates that Dropbox and other cloud services are using AI to screen uploaded images for child porn. I suppose the screened images are then reviewed by outsourced humans in India or someplace, and further reviewed in the US for any referral to prosecution.
What this means is that your pictures of your baby on the changing table or kids at the beach, or even the nude photos of your adult girlfriend or shaved adult boyfriend may be getting screened out by the AI (because it probably errs on the side on caution) and then reviewed by Ravi in Bangalore.
Yes, you put your finger on
Yes, you put your finger on it, it's those nasty people from out of town who insist on moving here for some reason. Boston doesn't have any homegrown child molesters.
No True Bostonian fallacy.
No True Bostonian fallacy.
Nope
You are not from here and therefore you haven't been able to see the bias.
For years the word "Roxbury Man" was a no go in the Globe. Always referred to as a "Boston Man". Dorchester on the other hand was free game.
Thanks, but go back to Oregon. This guy is on the money 100% when he says this person is not a Dorchester person but actually someone living there until they move to Astoria or West Hollywood.
Or you two could just not
Or you two could just not hang your xenophobia and provincialism out to fly every time a story mentions someone from Away.
Horrifying to think this guy
Horrifying to think this guy has a whole "community" of others into this, but of course you are right.
I for one am happy that some guy in India is reviewing questionable stuff on the cloud, although I feel
sorry for that person, and hope it is mostly harmless baby pics and not a whole lot of stuff like this.
Man I really don't know if
Man I really don't know if "okay but that's not the REAL Boston" is the right argument to have having about child molesters, considering, you know, that the BOSTON Globe was the one to blow open a particularly virulent and horrible case of institutional child abuse. What with criminal charges brought against five men from that institution who were all longstanding BOSTON community members, and multiple of which had been born in, oh right, BOSTON, and had been covered up by their supervisor who had been in charge of the whole BOSTON area since the 80s.
Wherever this fuckhead is from, he lives in Dorchester now, hopefully soon to be living in a Massachusetts state prison.