Missing ABC Producer Arrested With Child Pornography Charge, Sent Messages About Raping Toddlers
Last April, the FBI raided the home of then-ABC News producer James Gordon Meek. The Emmy Award-winning journalist resigned from his role at ABC immediately following the raid.
As months passed, his neighbors and colleagues said they had not heard from him.
He had vanished.
Not until November did Meek reappear in public, this time on his way to his elderly mom's townhouse in McLean, Virginia. Still, he refused to answer why the FBI raided his home. Or why he went into hiding.
We now have answers.
Wednesday, federal authorities arrested Meek on one count of transportation of child pornography. The unsealed affidavit revealed agents uncovered a cache of disturbing images and texts on his phone.
Meek allegedly used apps such as Kik to chat under the username "Pawny4."
“Have you ever raped a toddler girl? It’s amazing,” Pawny4 wrote in one of the messages.
James Gordon Meek, via New York Post.
FBI agents seized other devices from Meek's home and found similar communications, along with images of child pornography.
According to the filing, investigators recovered an external hard drive at his home with "58 images and videos of child pornography."
In his bedroom, they found an iPhone 6 with "approximately 34 images and videos of suspected child pornography."
The investigation into Meek began in March 2021 when Dropbox cloud service filed a tip with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Dropbox claimed a user uploaded videos to its platform that "were later confirmed by law enforcement to contain child pornography,"
Investigators traced the account, with the user name "James Meek," to the suspect's home in Arlington.
"Meek’s devices allegedly contained images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and multiple chat conversations with users engaged in sexually explicit conversations where the participants expressed enthusiasm for the sexual abuse of children," according to a Justice Department statement.
