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After 12 hours in the operating room, a Children's Hospital anesthesiologist is arrested on child-porn charges
By adamg on Fri, 07/19/2024 - 3:40pm
An anesthesiologist who had just started a fellowship at Children's Hospital on July 1 was arrested at his Fenway apartment Thursday evening on charges he downloaded and shared pornographic photos and videos of children as young as infants over the past few months, according to records unsealed in US District Court in Boston today.
Dr. Christopher Sheerer, 35, a fellow in pediatric cardiac anesthesiology, was ordered held until at least a detention hearing on Tuesday, according to court records.
Homeland Security agents in Baltimore began investigating Sheerer in May, when he was still a pediatric anesthesiology fellow at Johns Hopkins, living in Lancaster, PA, according to an affidavit by an agent on the case.
Sheerer, who himself has a five-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, belonged to an online chat group for "dads, uncles, and babysitters" who traded photos and videos of naked children, according to the affidavit, which adds that to gain admission, they have to post a photo of a child known to the prospective member along with a sign listing the group's name.
After obtaining a search warrant and collecting evidence of his online activities over the past year, three Homeland Security agents were waiting for Sheerer when he arrived at his new Fenway home around 8 p.m. yesterday, wearing blue scrubs and carrying a backpack with the Children's logo on it, the affidavit states.
The agents told him they had search warrants for both him and his property and asked if they could speak to him in his apartment, according to the affidavit.
The doctor, who said he was just getting off 12 hours of surgery, agreed, they went upstairs and he gave them his iPhone 15, on which agents quickly found a logged-in app for the chat group along with images depicting "children ranging in age from infants to pubescent teenagers" in sexual poses and videos showing, among other things, "the sexual abuse of children by adults."
The agent writes Sheerer waived his Miranda rights and agreed to an interview.
When asked about what apps he used, he acknowledged that he had used Chat Application A but said that he hadn't used it in a couple of years. He initially claimed to have used the app to communicate with other doctors, and later indicated that he used it to communicate with people he was dating. SHEERER admitted that Google Account-1 was his, and indicated that he used it to communicate with people he was dating.
SHEERER denied having seen child pornography on the internet, and offered that he had never downloaded and saved it. When confronted with the assertion that there was child pornography on his phone, he told agents that he did not know how it got there.
Agents paused the interview to review evidence located on SHEERER's phone. When they resumed, they reminded SHEERER of his rights pursuant to Miranda and confirmed that he wished to continue speaking with them. They informed him that they had located child pornography in his Chat Application A account on the phone. SHEERER continued to disavow knowledge of how that child pornography got onto his device.
Agents paused the interview a second time and returned with the phone to show SHEERER certain material from Chat Application A. Agents presented him with one chat, which spanned June 11, 2023 through September 2023, in which he was discussing Minor A ["a child known to him," the affidavit states] and distributed to another user pictures and videos of a child believed to be Minor A. SHEERER admitted that one of the videos showed Minor A in the tub, but said that he didn't know who could have gotten the video and sent it out under his account. Agents showed SHEERER another video of a child believed to be Minor A, in which a hand can be seen with a sign with the handwritten name of the Verified Group. Agents showed SHEERER a third image from his Chat Application A account, which showed a child believed to be Minor A squatting naked on the bathroom floor and a hand holding the same note bearing the handwritten name of the Verified Group. SHEERER denied that she was Minor A.
In addition to the iPhone, agents also seized two laptops, an iPad and an Apple Watch, the affidavit states.
Innocent, etc.
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 Complete affidavit (has graphic descriptions of some of the images) | 281.89 KB |
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Comments
Scary to think …
… this guy may have had anesthetized children in his care.
His own daughter
If you read the affidavit, it's pretty clear he posted naked pictures of his own daughter to the group.
So horrifying
That poor daughter!
Disgusting
I can't believe anyone can look at a child and get excited like that. It makes my skin crawl.
It's probably not a choice.
As far as I can tell, some people are just wired that way. There was an article some years back about a support group for pedophiles -- lots of self-loathing involved.
You know what definitely is a choice, though? Crossing that line from pedophile to child molester, and making and sharing kiddie porn. Which it sounds like this guy did.
He isn’t safe to be in
He isn’t safe to be in society. He needs to be put away, far far away from children .
That might be true.
The other thing I learned from that article was that there's no one clear path for treatment. (On the other hand, there are apparently a *lot* of non-offending pedophiles, which you can see as either a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it...)
“Probably not a choice”
“Probably not a choice”
Hmm. Let’s use this logic with other mental disorders , focusing on addiction.
“It wasn’t the heroin addicts choice to rob his mother so he could score”
“It wasn’t the alcoholics choice to drive a car to the store while plastered so she could buy more booze”
“It wasn’t the pedophiles choice to continue doing something they knew was wrong when they could have seeked help instead”
Go back and read what I wrote, please.
All the things you describe there are choices, and I would agree that those require punishment/intervention/whatever.
I think you missed the part about pedophilia (a brain state) vs. child molestation (a set of actions). I know they get conflated a lot, but that just makes it harder to address the problem.
Doubling down on your ignorance
Addiction is an illness.
Robbing someone to support your illness is a choice.
Driving while drunk is a choice.
Mental illness is not a choice.
But go ahead and pretend your are an expert because you belieeeeeeeve something so strongly that it *must* be true!
The internet made this a "community."
in the old days, these guys were isolated and it was risky and difficult to find others with the same perversion, let alone the pictures and videos. Not least because there were no digital photos or videos. They might not even really know it was a "thing," other than getting a little thrill seeing a little girl or boy.
Now, more guys are aware and exposed to it, and able to find others and the material to fuel their perversion, even though it's still risky as this doctor learned too late.
Remember the NYC cop who was caught in a cannibal discussion group plotting to kill and eat someone? Same thing.
Paraphilias grow and are sustained by the internet.
Tragedy, in the old days an anesthesiologist would have probably suppressed whatever perv desires he had and not wrecked his life and wasted his training.
Ten years' minimum mandatory sentence, I believe.
Isolated yes, but ...
The testimony of victims from families and communities that suppressed and ignored child rape or beat children into silence when it happened, plus the widespread Pedophile Priest and Coach McFeelie disasters say otherwise.
Many pedos found plenty of ways to offend physically, in person, by going after family members or taking trusted positions working with children. Society systematically ignored or punished the victims for speaking up. Still does if you look at how Gym Jordan covered for a serial child sex offender and Dr. Nassar's reign of terror on young gymnasts.
The problem has always been with us. The internet just added networks for passing around pictures of exploited children. But the internet has also brought to light the abuses of the past and created a culture where these things are spoken about, victims are more likely to speak up and be heard, and offenders are punished.
I don't disagree
internet has its negatives and positives.
Or just as bad
Or would have targeted a child that they have access to in their life. I suspect that people like this may justify, in their head, that fantasizing over very real images of very real children being abused isn't as bad because they're not the ones doing it, despite the fact that there are very real victims of very real crimes. Consumption of such media is not victimless at all.
Not in the least. Cannibal Cop was discussing fantasies, not sharing media showing people being killed and eaten or eating people. Is it bizarre? Yes, very. He was brought up in charges and eventually convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping and of misusing a government crime database, but the judge assigned to the case vacated the conspiracy conviction citing a complete lack of credible evidence that he actually intended to fulfill his fantasies. The judge's decision to throw out the conspiracy conviction was held up on appeal, and the Appeals Court went further and threw out the database access conviction.
can we agree that the fantasy of
kidnapping, cutting up and roasting women is a perversion?
The reversal of his conviction is irrelevant to my point about perv "communities."
WTF
Just stop hurting children. Just stop!
Feels like a big uptick
Is it just me or does it feel/ seem like child predators are at an all time high. A day doesn’t go by where I do not see a foiled adult/ child meet up video or someone is getting arrested.
These people should be chemically castrated then jailed for eternity. People who hurt or take advantage of children deserve no quarter.
Based on my own anecdata ...
I'd say, no uptick.
Local and federal authorities don't publicize every single arrest they make in general but they do when it comes to child pornography. And I get to see all the press releases for such arrests in the Boston area.
I haven't seen any particular upswing in child-porn arrests of late.
And yes, this is definitely anecdata; I stand to be corrected by somebody who has actual stats.
All is not what it seems
The question "doesn't it seem like this is getting worse?" should almost always be separated into two questions: "does it seem like this is getting worse?", to which the answer is usually "yes, probably," and "is this getting worse?", to which the answer is usually "no, probably not." There is a strong tendency in the human mind to infer nonexistent trends from recent events, and this is particularly true of downward trends. Almost every age thinks that it is in a state of decline, including the ages that later ones regard as golden.
children's hospital
Is that one of the hospitals that carries out child mutilation?
No.
No.
Delete this comment and this user
Adam, there have been violent threats AND violent actions against healthcare providers and institutions that provide gender-affirming care. This kind of behavior is unacceptable. It should not be allowed, here or anywhere.