The continuing allure of ritual abuse stories, in 2026
Update on Feb 11, 2026: Voldeng et. al. rearranges timeline for releasing evidence, now says there will be no Part 2 of her blog. Read more here.
Editing note on Jan 22, 2026:
Please see the footnote below for an update related to the Snopes report released Jan 21, 2026.1
Author’s Note:
The following is an opinion piece based on the November 23, 2025 by Lisa Noelle Voldeng regarding her interviews with Sascha Barros Riley. It is not my intention to say here that either Lisa Noelle Voldeng or Sascha Barros Riley are lying. As will become clear in this piece, I think the information they have presented is incorrect. I cannot speculate as to their motives. People become sincerely convinced of falsehoods for all manner of reasons, none of which require bad faith actions.
Based on the information I have in January 2026, I believe this story to be false. I am open to more information coming to light that proves otherwise. I cannot say for certain this story is false. However, I do not believe it based on the evidence I have at this time.
This article contains descriptions of violent incidents involving sexual assault.
Why Does This Matter?
On November 23, 2025, Lisa Noelle Voldeng released a Substack article called “Don’t Worry, Boys are Hard to Find.” The article contained six unredacted audio files of Voldeng’s interviews with a man named Sascha Barrows Riley. Riley, born in 1973, maintains that he was adopted in 1975 by a pilot and PI named William Riley, who was in the employ of Jeffrey Epstein. Throughout Riley’s childhood, he was taken to a number of locations throughout Tennessee and Alabama, where he was sold to politicians who enjoyed beating and sexually abusing him, among other children. During this time, Riley says he saw children murdered and abused. These events were filmed and sold as CSAM and “snuff films” to Epstein’s clients. Riley particularly feared the abuse he faced from one man, Donald Trump.
This is a story I became familiar with because several people I know read this blog, passed it around, and found it convincing. And with all respect to those people: that completely baffled me.
I don’t mean that I struggle to believe that a child predator could be so depraved, or that our president is a terrible person. I mean that this specific testimony struck me as the kind of thing that Austin Butler’s character in Eddington would say – a story by and for a conspiracy-minded audience. That said, I also understood why people I knew found this story compelling. Skepticism for mainstream, major media sources is at an all-time high, as is interest in new media for politics and current events. The fact that this story was on Substack, and not MSNBC, was part of the appeal. Likewise, Riley’s full-throated, unredacted testimony under his own name stands in stark contrast to the reporting on Epstein that emerges from the House Oversight Committee. The FBI might dodge names and details. Riley doesn’t. I am sure that gives the story a veneer of forthrightness.
That said, I don’t think it’s true, and I think the fact that I know some reasonable people who have fallen for it is in itself a sign of the times.
This is one of those blogs I write where I fully expect my entire audience to be mad at me no matter what I say. On one hand, people who are unfamiliar with these allegations may simply think it is a waste of time to debunk outlandish claims that have not been picked up by any major media outlets. To this, I can only say that “don’t give it attention” is a civic idea that has been tried many times in the last decade and found wanting. Your ability to ignore cranks, kooks, and conspiracy theories may well be greater than that of the median American’s. For the rest of the country, having an answer to point to might be helpful. Likewise, even if you have never heard of this particular story, you’ve probably heard of something like it. Ritual abuse hoaxes fade in and out of public life fairly consistently, and they tend to be de-bunkable using similar sets of data. Keep this information in your pocket for the next one.
On the other hand, I’m sure many people will simply think that, by debunking claims made about Trump and Epstein, that I’m defending criminals, or at the very least throwing in my lot with a vile political movement. To this, I would say that if you’re going to oppose the president, you should oppose him for reasons that are true. It might turn out, at some point, that more data is released that corroborates Riley’s claims. If so, that’s important. But until then, I think it’s always within our own best interests, and within the best interests of the entire body politic, to think rationally, expect evidence to support claims, and act based on true information.
Usually in these situations, the fear is that, if we don’t, innocent people will be harmed. That doesn’t really apply in the case of conspiracy theories around politicians and Epstein. The risk that innocent people will be hurt by these allegations is significantly lower than it is in the case of the Satanic Panic. In fact, if anything, it seems that all offenders associated with Epstein are quite unlikely to face any consequences at all.
People feel, very fairly, that our government is lying to us and keeping secrets from us. They think that powerful people are protecting monsters. They are angry at the sluggishness of our leaders to bring offenders to justice. This is all completely reasonable.
However, these are exactly the moments when our defenses against falsehoods need to be at their highest. It’s easy to guard against conspiracy theories and credulousness when one is satisfied and comfortable. It’s much more difficult when one is frustrated or upset with the “powers that be,” and overwhelmed with the sense that our leaders have failed us. When this happens, conspiracy theories become more attractive. The problem is that these theories often lead us away from the true things we should be angry about
So when I look at my otherwise-rational friends who have been persuaded by Sascha Riley, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand why. Epstein’s crimes have been publicly known and used as a political football for more than half a decade now. Even so, the sense that any reckoning is coming for abusers feels like swimming in molasses. Instead, the same figures who are often most eager to bait voters with the promise of bringing Epstein’s associates to justice are often those exact same figures who do the most to prevent it. It’s infuriating. The allure of a story like Riley’s is that it is so graphic it promises to shake the country out of its paralysis. We would have to act, once the world heard Riley’s story. No one could possibly stand by and continue on as they always had, knowing our president had done this.
We’ll return to that line of thinking at the end. For now, I want to continue to the heart of the matter: I don’t think Sascha Riley’s story is true, and I think Lisa Noelle Voldeng, who’s told the story, knows how little evidence she can provide. If it was, yes, of course it could be game-changing testimony that would shift American politics dramatically. But it’s probably not true.
Let’s start with the biggest red flag of them all.
Don’t Trust Anyone Who Tells You Not To Look for Evidence
Here’s Voldeng on corroborating evidence:
“But what must be understood – is that the corroborative evidence, is supplemental. The corroborative evidence supports the truthful testimony. And truthful testimony of what was seen, and heard, and experienced, is not only evidence, but among the most important evidence. And while truthful testimony and supporting evidence is important and evidence of truth – the truth itself is evidence. Essential evidence. Primary evidence. Fas Prima. And the fraudulent systems that suppress the truth and oppress the innocent, will no longer stand.“
This is not a good sign. The entire paragraph is question-begging. The corroborating evidence, per Voldeng, is supplemental, because the most important information is true testimony. How do we know the testimony is true? Because it is true. There’s then an appeal to our moral character, that the time of people failing to believe true testimony is coming to an end. Why should you believe this testimony? Because it’s true, and you’re a good person for believing it.
This is all very reminiscent of the 1980s slogan “We Believe the Children,” which featured prominently among activists pushing for prosecution of daycare workers. The idea that people should believe “the children” was framed as a moral problem, about which no good person could disagree. Who wouldn’t believe “children?” Of course, this idea was always selectively applied, because these same people did not believe children at all when they said they were pressured or bullied into making up abuse stories. The reason to believe something, or not, is because of evidence. Appealing to the content of one’s character to bypass evidence should always be suspect.
Voldeng subtly encourages you to feel bad for wanting corroborating data.
In the first audio file, Voldeng says that anyone with “integrity” will have no trouble believing these stories. That’s completely false. Credulousness is not a sign of good character. It’s actually a pretty neutral value. Believing good evidence is a sign of good character and critical thinking skills. Believing bad evidence is not. To associate belief itself with virtue is at least mistaken and at worst manipulative. There is absolutely nothing morally wrong with wanting evidence before you believe a claim.
Now, to be fair: this cuts both ways. I am not saying that Riley is a grifter, or a lunatic, or an attention-seeker. I don’t have evidence for any of those things. Riley could either be the witness of some highly improbable events, or he could be sincerely persuaded of something that is false through no fault of his own. “Believing victims,” though, is a posture that depends on begging the question. Who should you believe? Victims. How do you know they are victims? Because you believe them. That’s silly. Believing any testimony about victimization should look the way we believe anyone else: with a spirit of charity and open-mindedness, whose story either becomes more or less credible because of corroborating data.
So that brings us to the problem of corroborating data.
Voldeng cannot have some of the evidence she says she has.
“The evidence is ample. Pornography films, videos, CPS reports, FBI reports on WKR – and a military report involving the court-martial of a fellow soldier found with child pornography depicting Sascha and one of the murder victims; Samantha, a decade earlier. Much of the evidence has been suppressed. Some is obtainable by FOIA request, and by investigator request.“
Voldeng surely does not have CSAM depicting Riley’s abuse. She cannot possibly have that. It would be illegal for her to have that. She is not a police officer. If she does, she is literally committing a crime by seeking that out and obtaining it. You can’t just have CSAM on your computer. That’s illegal.
Nor do I believe she has a video of a child named Samantha being murdered. Again, I don’t know how she would have obtained such a thing without doing some extremely dangerous, or possibly illegal, deals online.
The thing is, I think Voldeng is actually not listing the evidence she does have, but the evidence that would prove this story is true. On that count she’s right, but it’s also besides the point if she doesn’t have it. The reason I suspect this is because Riley disagrees with Voldeng about how much evidence she has. Voldeng here mentions a report of a court martial trial of a soldier who had CSAM, but if you listen to the audio, Riley isn’t sure he remembers the name of this soldier, nor what happened to him. If Riley doesn’t know that, how could Voldeng possibly have a paper record of this trial? Even if she did (and I don’t think she does), it would be extremely unlikely that the trial records would include the names of the children abused in the CSAM material.
When “absence of evidence for X” is treated as “evidence for X,” that’s never a good sign.
When Voldeng says the evidence has been suppressed, this is a statement that depends on our assumption that the evidence would exist, but it’s been destroyed.
That could be true. But it could also just be true that the evidence never existed at all. Several of the events described here could have and should have left a considerable paper trail – namely, the arrested and trial of a soldier, who Riley says might have been named Staff Sergeant Hable, who was caught with CSAM of Riley at Fort Carson in 2008. If those records don’t exist, we could interpret it as evidence that Fort Carson tirelessly covered for Staff Sergeant Hable and these events now only live in Riley’s memory. Or we could interpret it as evidence that this trial didn’t happen. You would need more data to decide which story is more plausible.
So that brings me to internal testimony. Given that all we have is Riley’s own story, could Riley’s story be true?
Why Sascha Riley’s Story Isn’t True, Based on the Evidence I Have Now
I could have written fifty pages on why I think Riley’s story is almost certainly false. If more data comes out, I will cheerfully retract this, and a number of academic works on 20th century history will need to be revised as well. There are a thousand ways into this material, and if you’ve listened to any of the audio yourself, you can probably hear others I missed.
It is possible Riley has some other traumatic memories that have been transposed into this. I don’t know. He says he has physical scars from these incidents and they may be evidence of any number of crimes. I’m not his doctor. The references Voldeng makes to Riley’s own medical records and CPS reports, if they in fact have them, could very well witness to abuse that happened in Riley’s own home. I would not rule that out. But, I can say that the story as Riley narrates it is highly implausible.
I don’t think this section requires exhaustive exploration, so I’ll just give a glancing blow at a few key areas.
Riley’s Narrative Gets More Problematic Every Time He Names Someone
Riley’s narrative involves events between 1978 to 1986. He also names a lot of people whose whereabouts in the late 1970s and early 1980s make it highly improbable that he interacted with them. For example:
Ghislaine Maxwell
Ghislaine Maxwell graduated from Oxford in 1985. She would have been between the ages of 17 and 25 during the years Riley recalls. While accounts differ as to when exactly Maxwell met Epstein, the earliest possible date could have been at a party in the late 1980s.
Andy Biggs
Andy Biggs completed his LDS mission around 1978, after which he enrolled in BYU. He graduated in 1982, and completed his JD in 1984.
Throughout most of the years described, Biggs was either a student or a young lawyer in Hobbs, New Mexico. It is unclear why such a figure would have privileged access to an elite society of billionaires and politicians.
Jim Jordan
Jim Jordan graduated from high school in 1982. He graduated from UW-Madison in 1986. Riley places this minor, and eventually undergrad, in this circle of elite, moneyed pedophiles. This is unlikely.
Vladimir Putin
Putin first entered politics in 1990, serving as an advisor for Mayor Anatoly Sobchak in St. Petersburg. In the late 1970s, Putin worked for the KGB monitoring foreigners in Leningrad. He was transferred to Dresden in 1985, where he served until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990. It’s highly unlikely that Putin, a working-class member of the pencil-pushing army of KGB agents tasked with obsessively monitoring anti-communist agitators, would have held much interest for wealthy American businesspeople in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Jane Goodall
Riley says that during his time in foster care, his behavior was so extreme that Jane Goodall was called upon to work with him. The idea that Goodall, or anyone else, would have thought that her experience observing chimpanzees would make her a good social worker with troubled youth is hard to believe. Goodall started the Roots and Shoots youth advocacy program in 1991, the year Riley turned eighteen. Roots and Shoots was started in Tanzania, and it is not a program for troubled youth.
What all of Riley’s abusers have in common is that in forty years they will be famous, but they are not famous at the time. Meanwhile, this elite network of celebrities and billionaires does not seem to contain any celebrities or politicians who were famous in the early 1980s but are not now. The relationship between time and fame exclusively favors 2021 to the present day, not the other way around. Riley does not remember seeing an entertainer who was known in 1980 but not today, nor the governor of Tennessee in the 1980s, etc. He does, however, see students and young professionals who will be powerful in forty years.
Riley’s Account of First Disclosing that He Was a Victim of CSAM Is Implausible
According to Riley, while he was stationed at Fort Carson in 2008, a fellow soldier was found to have CSAM. This person may have been named Staff Sergeant Hable. Riley’s commanding officer, named Colasanto, saw the footage and approached Riley, saying that the boy in the video looked strikingly like Riley. (I have always seen write-ups who call the commanding officer Michael Bis, but Colasanto is the name in the first audio file.)
Whatever the person’s name is, this strikes me as extremely implausible. According to the Marine I consulted for this, the first order of business would have been to secure Hable’s weapon and contact JAG. It would likely not be up to the commanding officer to watch CSAM to determine the validity of the accusation. It is even more implausible that the commanding officer would watch this material so carefully that he would recognize a soldier as a child on base in this footage. By this time, Riley would have been 35.
Experts on military law can weigh in here, but according to Riley, he himself never saw the footage but found it plausible that it portrayed him based on his commanding officer’s description of it. Again, for this to be true we would need to say that a commanding officer, on US soil, watched CSAM carefully enough to describe the events and to recognize someone in his chain of command in the material. Riley supposes that he was approached with this question to ascertain whether a minor was actually depicted in the material. This also strikes me as unlikely, because Riley says that when this footage was taken, he would have been between six and thirteen. The idea that a military officer would need to ask a subordinate about whether or not a pubescent child was under 18 seems unlikely.
Riley says at one point that the video was called “Bette Davis Eyes,” presumably named for the Kim Carnes song, which won a Grammy in 1982. If the video was made around then, Riley would have been between nine and eleven, difficult to mistake for an adult man.
It’s possible this was all a product of the least professional day in Fort Carson history. Still, even if there was an officer at Fort Carson who was dumb and depraved enough to perform the actions described here, that person would still need to be able to recognize someone he knew in passing in a 25-year-old photograph. That in itself strains credulity.
The Dream Logic of the Allegations Looks a Lot like the “Recovered Memories” of the Satanic Panic
I’ve written a little about the satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s, so we’ll take a quick summary here. The satanic ritual abuse scare of the 1980s began with the release of Michelle Smith’s 1980 book Michelle Remembers. This memoir details the series of memories that Smith “recovered” with her therapist (and eventually husband) Lawrence Pazder. Pazder would hypnotize or drug Smith, and then encourage her to spend hours free associating her “memories” of being part of a Satanic cult that abused her for years. This kind of testimony eventually was sought by police departments all over the country to charge and convict innocent childcare providers with abuse. The most famous of these incidents was the McMartin Preschool trial, the longest and most expensive trial in United States history (1984-90).
When you look at testimony from the McMartin Preschool trial, or the transcripts of Michelle Smith’s memories in Michelle Remembers, one thing that becomes really obvious is that none of the stories make logistical sense, and those elements of the testimony that would need to be practically explained are usually elided from the story. That’s because the memories are based on dreams or hallucinations, or in the case of the McMartin preschool trial, stories invented by small children because of investigator pressure.
For example, many of Michelle Smith’s memories seem to operate by dream physics – for example, a baby being cut up on someone’s stomach. At the risk of sounding glib, it’s hard to believe that a child’s torso would be a sturdy enough surface to use as a cutting board for human bone. (Ever spatchcocked a chicken or cleaned a fish? How easy would it be to do that on a soft surface, like a mattress? What about a child’s torso?) None of these stories ever account for logistical details, like the drive to ceremonies, how water and food is provided for multi-day rituals, or the means by which large groups of children are transported. But these are all details you would absolutely expect to see in a true story.
Riley’s testimony is pretty similar to Smith’s and the McMartin transcripts. All Riley’s abuse takes place at indoor-outdoor venues, such as a house with a tent outside. (Riley often refers to these venues as “farms,” with the structure on the venue being called a “farmhouse.”) These festivals, according to Riley, all go on for several days and often include several dozen adults and at least as many children. Since these festivals are apparently intended to appeal to the ultra-wealthy, one would assume that we’re talking about venues that can comfortably and stylishly feed and house at least a hundred people for a week, but in total privacy (outdoor bloodsports, animal torture, and the torture and execution of children are all prominently featured here). The workforce that would be able to provide janitorial service, transportation, food, and corpse disposal for dozens of people for a week would be, to say the least, sizable – and this happened fairly regularly in several states over the course of years. Even if the perpetrators have been silent, one would expect that at least a few of the implied catering staff would have seen something and spoken up by now. If these were rotating locations, then none of these people were in the full-time employ of child traffickers. Where are they? I don’t doubt that it’s easy to buy the silence of a child abuser, but what about the guy who mows the lawn for the blood sports?
The number of homes in the country, let alone in the south, that could comfortably house even fifty people for a week is quite small. The one-time largest home in Tennessee, the Villa Colina (completed in 2000), only had eight bedrooms. America’s largest home, completed in 1997, has eighteen bedrooms. So it strains credulity that any of these venues that Riley frequented were in private homes. He seems to be describing something more like a hotel, a resort, or a campground, even as he describes them as “farms” and “farmhouses.” Surely the presence of celebrities and politicians for long stays in such locations would have been memorable to the staff – to say nothing of the rampant kid-killing that happened during these conferences. Where are they?
So let’s go through one of the stories: the account of the murder of Patricia and Riley’s attack on Trump. This is recounted repeatedly in the audio files.
The incident in question takes place at a “farmhouse.” Riley’s father takes Riley to one of these multi-day parties at a farm or fairground for sadistic child abusers. Outside, adults and children fight each other (after training) for the amusement of onlookers. Inside, adults rape children. Riley’s father encourages Riley to enjoy himself the way the adults do at this party. Riley, who is between ages 8-10, finds his friend Patricia (same age), who has been trafficked with him before. Patricia agrees to have sex with Riley, in order to satisfy the demands made of both of them (Riley is expected to act like “a man,” Patricia is supposed to entertain clients.) The two go into the “farmhouse” and find a bedroom and have sex. After some time, the two are attacked.
Between five to eight adults enter the room and hold Riley at gunpoint. They then assault Patricia and shoot her in the bed. The men then warn Riley that the same thing will happen to him if he doesn’t comply for the next client. They then remove Patricia’s body, and the mattress, replace it, and send in Donald Trump.
Donald Trump abuses Riley and then orders Riley to have sex with him. Trump seems to be facedown on the bed at this point. Riley sees a tent peg in the room, and puts a condom on it. He then inserts it into Trump’s rectum and kicks it. This severely wounds Trump, who needs to be removed for medical attention.
Here are things you have to believe for this story to be true:
- A group of internationally connected elite billionaires, when deciding to host a festival of blood sport, torture, and rape, select an indoor-outdoor farm venue in Tennessee or Alabama as the ideal location.
- The farmhouse had enough bedrooms for dozens of adults to privately abuse children.
- A gunshot in the farmhouse was an ordinary event, because everyone present at this event expected children to be shot during it.
- The cartel extensively trained their victims to physically fight to the death, and then also left those children alone with clients.
- The festival was well-staffed enough that a murder scene could become accessible enough for clients within a matter of hours. They even had spare mattresses.
- This farmhouse bedroom had a tent peg in it.
- In the process of removing a body and mattress, no one thought to remove weapons from the room.
- An adult man mistook a tent peg for a ten-year-old’s penis during the entire time it took a ten-year-old to insert it into his rectum, stand up on the bed, and kick it, because it was covered in a condom.
This is all fairly difficult for me to believe. It’s not just that hundreds of people would be able to provide corroborating testimony for these events (though, that matters). It’s that it sounds more like dream logic than real events. I don’t expect traumatic memories to be crystal clear. But I do expect events that are remembered clearly to make sense. This one doesn’t.
There’s two literary references in this story that seem to me like they could have easily influenced these stories and combined to make a false memory. The first is the biblical story of Jael from Judges 4-5, who kills General Sisera with a tent peg while he is asleep. The second is the 2010 movie The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which features a remarkably similar attack. (Warning: the scene is graphic, but if you can stomach it, you’ll see it overlaps almost perfectly.
Why Does This Matter, Revisited
Why do these stories continuously attract attention? How is it that, every few years, a story like this seems to capture a significant amount of imagination?
Because Sascha Riley’s testimony is not alone here. The satanic ritual abuse panic of the 1980s lasted as long as it did in large part because of the significant number of police officers, social workers, doctors, and ordinary citizens who came to believe highly fanciful and utterly uncorroborated stories, to the detriment of dozens of innocent people. More recently, the Hamstead Hoax of 2014 targeted 175 parents and teachers in North London, who were accused of completely fictitious crimes and harassed for years by the people who believed these wild stories. These are the kinds of stories that, it seems, otherwise rational people don’t need evidence to believe.
But why?
Every panic has its own particular “why.” In the case of ritual abuse panics, much of this seems to have been inspired by a reluctance to accept that abuse primarily happens in the home, and a growing discomfort with the number of working mothers in the country. The Hampstead hoax seems to have been driven by mounting anxiety regarding sexual abuse of children in North London and the sense that police were not doing enough about it.
When it comes to wild stories about Epstein, whether we’re talking about the adrenochrome-centered stories about the Clintons that proliferated through Q-Anon or the kid-killing farms of Tennessee presented here, I think there’s a pretty simple explanation. The public wants to hear the story that will change everything.
We are now one year into Trump’s second term, and Trump’s longtime campaign promise – that he would bring Epstein’s associates to justice — has thoroughly faded. Trump has been repeatedly inclined to mercy regarding the one person who has been sentenced for her crimes involving Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell. The few documents that have been released have been redacted to the point of uselessness. The rest remains in the shadows. Victims die waiting for anyone to answer for their crimes. Elected officials are sluggish and unbothered.
In light of all this, it makes sense that the public would crave the story that no one can ignore, the story that would shake the nation to its foundations and force people to act. These kinds of stories, that clearly name elected officials and portray them performing acts that even the most ardent Trump fan could not defend, promise to do exactly that. And that’s why they take less evidence to believe.
I don’t blame people for hoping that more victims of Epstein feel safe to come to light. I don’t blame people for pursuing the hope that Epstein’s associates will be held accountable. But lapsing into credulousness about any report that comes along is not the way to do this.
1 Jordan Liles has apparently been investigating this story as well. To run through what Liles has said so far: Liles was unable to find any official records to substantiate these claims. As he noted, that is in itself bizarre. Liles also kept his investigation where I did — that is, to whether the public figures Riley accused were likely to have abused him. Neither Liles nor I have the ability to determine if Riley was ever abused.
The most interesting thing Liles reported was a conversation with First Sergeant Michael Balis, who did confirm over email that he served with a soldier who was disciplined for possessing CSAM, and that he was in the room when an officer asked Riley about a video involving a boy who resembled him.
Here is where we have to look at what has actually been said, though. As far as I know, Balis has NOT confirmed that that conversation involved Donald Trump (in 2008-2010, which are both dates I’ve heard Riley name as the date of this incident, Riley had to have known who Trump was). Balis also cannot confirm if Riley was actually in the video, seeing as he did not see it himself. Balis does not say how Riley responded to these questions. All we have confirmation of is 1) a soldier was found with CSAM and 2) some of the questions Riley recounts being asked were asked.
For those who are eager to believe this, this will likely be taken as complete confirmation of everything that’s happened. I personally still think we are left with a lot of vagaries and implausibility. Other explanations for this story remain possible — like the question of whether this video actually involved a much older Riley and was not itself the CSAM the soldier was caught with. Riley’s initial claim was that this video was made in 1982-3, which would make Riley nine or ten, and recognizable to his commanding officers at age thirty-five. If this was a video made later, when Riley was in his late teens or twenties, it would be easier for Riley to be recognized.
One reason why I think this is a live possibility is because of the medium of transfer. In order to have CSAM in 2008 from 1982, someone would have had to digitize a VHS and make it available for online consumption (by 2008, CSAM possession was almost entirely understood to be a cybercrime.) This is possible, but cumbersome. The first consumer-grade camcorder was not available until 1983, which means that CSAM produced by this alleged Trump-based group would have needed to be shot with cumbersome professional-grade studio cameras and then transferred to VHS. Then, those VHS tapes would need to survive and circulate long enough to be digitized.
However, digital camcorders were available as early as 1995, which would make the process of private video production for the purposes of digital consumption much easier. If this is the case, it’s possible that the reason why Riley was approached was not because he was recognized as a nine-year-old, but because a circulating video of him in his early 20s was found in a cache involving CSAM and his age would have been relevant and perhaps difficult to ascertain.
Without knowing more about exactly what Balis said, I think these are all live possibilities.
Editor’s Note
Stories like this matter because false allegations can cause lasting harm. The victims of hoaxes are not abstract concepts. They are parents, teachers, investigators, communities, and sometimes genuine abuse victims whose experiences become harder to identify when fantasy is mistaken for evidence.
American Crime Journal thanks Dr. Laura Robinson for her willingness to examine extraordinary claims through the lens of evidence rather than assumption. Whether confronting the Satanic Panic of the 1980s or its modern descendants, skepticism is not cynicism. It is a safeguard against moral panics, conspiracy theories, and unsupported allegations.
Readers interested in Dr. Robinson’s work can follow her research and commentary: Not Peer Reviewed: By Laura Robinson on Substack.
Resources & Further Reading
Examining Sascha Riley’s audio recordings alleging abuse by Epstein, Trump | Snopes.com
“Don’t worry. Boys are hard to find.” Part 1 o2
We Believe the Children: The Story of a Moral Panic by Richard Beck | Goodreads
The McMartin Preschool Case: Satanic Panic | A&E
America’s Largest Home | Hurwitz James Company
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: The Torture Scene
