Details revealed in the arrest of Enrique Pearce, 41, a campaign consultant who up until a week ago was making $5,000 a month working for San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, indicate that Pearce allegedly owned photos and videos of infants and young children being raped and sexually violated, including photos he allegedly took himself of young boys.
Deputy District Attorney Alexis Fasteaus said that the children were unaware they were being photographed, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Fasteau revealed that law enforcement had started investigating Pearce after another man reported chatting online with someone using the screen name “redentice” who wrote “sharing a boy with another man is really hot.” She also said that Pearce had 4,902 images on one of his laptop computers; over 600 included minors engaged in sexual conduct, at least 10 showed “prepubescent minors” under the age of 12, and many photos apparently showed men hurting children.
According to the Chronicle, Police Sgt. Candiece Lewis of the police special victims unit said that on February 7, a man entered Central Police station and mentioned someone had contacted him online asking “do you perv?” and if he was “lookin to explore 8-12.”
Pearce was hit with five felony child pornography charges; his attorney said he would make bail and be released by Wednesday night. June 12 was set for his pretrial conference.
In addition to Lee, Pearce worked for Democrat Jane Kim in her successful 2010 campaign for the Board of Supervisors, and for Matt Gonzales’ unsuccessful run for mayor of San Francisco in 2003. Both Kim and Gonzales are far-left politicians, with Gonzales running for Vice President on the Green Party ticket in 2008.
In an interesting sidenote, SF Weekly reported that Pearce rarely sleeps more than four hours a night, and quoted him saying, “I’ve been an insomniac ever since middle school.”
Now we know why.