An online petition is calling for the FBI to launch an investigation into a pedophile forum where members have detailed discussions about child abuse, solicit photos and share sexual fantasies about underage victims.
The site contains more than 5,000 threads and close to 30,000 messages at the time of writing and remains active, with roughly 3,000 members signing up to post. Newsweek is not naming the website due to the disturbing nature of its content.
Multiple YouTubers have tried to raise awareness of the forum in recent weeks, urging their viewers to report its known web domains to authorities. It gained fresh attention yesterday after a video calling for its shutdown was shared on Reddit.
"We live in a society that is trying to justify and normalize rape and pedophilia, and this is unacceptable," wrote Belle DeMasi, who filed a Change.org petition about the forum and its alleged administrator that has attracted over 160,000 signatures.
"The children talked about by adults in these forums are [in] great danger. One man said he is trying to seduce his own daughter, and if that doesn't work he'd force himself on to her. Although it's extremely disturbing and triggering to read, it needs to come to light," DeMasi added, building on YouTube videos she filmed on the topic this month.
The forum appears to have some origins in the "incel" community, a male supremacist subculture that targets and objectifies women for what they perceive to be a denial of their right to sex—with extremists often advocating for violence or rape.
On the front page, the site has message boards titled "Rapey Misogyny" and "Femoid discussion," the latter of which is a term that was popularized by incel groups.
It also includes a dedicated section where members can share "adult stories with pedo, rape, gore, sci-fi themes" and another for users to organize of discuss "meetups." There are multiple gallery boards that appear locked to outsiders, labeled private.
The "Femoid discussion" board is particularly stomach-turning, with users requesting app details of underage members, asking for pictures to verify female users and talking about rape fantasies. Despite double-digit replies, some threads have hundreds of views, indicating more people are viewing the posts than actively responding.
In some of the more extreme cases, members posted images of women and their young children, asking if they should be abused. In a post shared September 12, one person made a thread titled "My baby is beautiful" with the question: "Anyone want pics?"
The forum administrator has seemingly made little attempt to conceal their identity, with account details on the person's profile—which uses the pseudonym "Leucosticte"—previously being tied to Nathan Larson, a 39-year-old man in Catlett, Virginia.
Larson has a documented history with the incel community and has previously admitted to being a pedophile and making multiple forums for abusers, HuffPost reported in 2018 as he was running for Congress as an independent candidate in his home state.
During HuffPost's investigation, which detailed Larson's multiple failed attempts to run for office, he admitted to using the names Leucosticte and Lysander.
On his now-defunct websites, Larson, who has a daughter, reportedly wrote "numerous posts" endorsing child abuse, but claimed that he had not committed crimes.
As noted by FactCheck.org, he was sentenced to prison in 2009 after sending an email to the U.S. Secret Service that included a threat to kill the president, who at the time was George W. Bush. Pleading guilty, he was handed a 16 month term.
The Leucosticte account on the most-recent pedophile forum matches many details known about Larson, including age and location. The admin continues to respond to messages on the site, and appears to be incredibly active on the platform daily.
In recent days, the admin's account has urged members not to "get panicky" over rising speculation about law enforcement action against the website. In the thread that asked about posting images of a baby, the Leucosticte account replied: "Do it."
In a post on Tuesday, Leucosticte said: "Women are just good for sex and babies, for the most part. It's an essential role but it's for the most part all they can do. And they can't even do that very consistently and satisfactorily without men forcing them."
Since last week, the admin has been asking members about the legal implications of debating online with DeMasi, the YouTuber attempting to shut him down.
"I was thinking about self-incrimination—how best to avoid it?" he wrote September 7. "Maybe I just won't admit to owning any particular sites or having any particular online accounts. She can say, 'this is the owner of [forum]' or 'as Leucosticte, you wrote ...' but I won't admit it on camera. I'll just sidestep that and say what my opinions are."
Repzion, the YouTuber whose video about the forum was shared to Reddit this week, expressed shock that the illicit content and discussions remained online.
"What's so weird about this is, is that this is in plain sight, this is easily accessible, this is not hidden behind some dark web," they said. "And here's a website in plain sight that's exploiting, normalizing, justifying and describing in explicit detail what they want to do to children, what they are doing with photos of children. I don't want children hurt."
It remains unclear if there is an active law enforcement investigation into the forum in the U.S. The DoJ public affairs division has been contacted for comment by Newsweek. An email sent to the forum's contact page address was not immediately answered.
Specialists from the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) sexual assault hotline are available 24/7 via phone (1 (800) 656-4673) and online chat. Additional support from the group is also accessable via a new mobile app.
