What September shows
At a Glance
September’s strongest cases span direct role-based access and structural-risk cases. Teachers and coaches allegedly encountered students through school or athletic authority; clergy cases involved congregational or spiritual trust; healthcare cases involved patients in vulnerable settings; corrections cases involved people subject to custodial power; and household cases involved adults with parental, foster, adoptive, or caregiving control.
The month also shows why a narrow “occupation caused the offense” test misses important prevention lessons. A middle-school assistant principal accused in an undercover operation of trying to obtain sex from someone he believed was under 14 did not need to target an actual student for his school role to matter. His real-world job placed him in daily authority over children of essentially the same age. That is a structural-risk nexus, not an incidental résumé detail.
Several cases concern systems rather than a single defendant: an alleged “passing the trash” concealment scheme, a federal youth-sports investigation after a SafeSport ban failed to end coaching access, a Title IX resolution, clergy-abuse settlements and findings, a reopened Cornell investigation, and a lawsuit over safeguards at an elite youth-athletics event. These are the places where prevention succeeds or fails before a registry ever becomes relevant.
September 2026 shows the same prevention gap across very different settings: classrooms, churches, treatment rooms, prisons, homes, athletics programs, elected office, and entertainment power all appear in the same month.
The strongest cases are not simply people with impressive job titles. They involve direct trusted access or a clear structural-risk nexus between the alleged conduct and the children, patients, incarcerated people, congregants, or communities those roles were supposed to protect.
Several of the month’s clearest accountability stories concern systems rather than isolated defendants: alleged school concealment, fragmented youth-sports oversight, Title IX failures, clergy-abuse findings, civil settlements, and reopened institutional investigations.
Only a small minority of the included individual cases were publicly identified as involving someone already required to register, underscoring how little registry-centered warning systems explain about where new risk actually emerges.
Public safety is not just a question of who is already on a list. September’s cases repeatedly point to the people and institutions that already had trust, access, authority, status, or custody before formal accountability began.
Criminal procedure
New Arrests & Charges
Education / youth sports
🏫
Sean Cassidy
Former Barrington Christian Academy teacher and athletics coach
September 2–9, 2026
Rhode Island / federal
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
A federal grand jury indicted Cassidy on child-exploitation, enticement, possession, and false-federal-officer charges after an earlier complaint alleged that he cultivated trust with a student through his teacher and coach roles and falsely claimed FBI authority.
Why included: School and coaching access were direct trust mechanisms, and the alleged use of invented federal authority added a second layer of legitimacy.
🏫
Allegra Fey Mora
Former Muleshoe High School teacher
September 9, 2026
Texas / federal
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
A federal grand jury charged Mora with enticement of a minor in a case involving an alleged sexual relationship with one of her students.
Why included: The alleged access point was the teacher-student relationship itself, making school authority central rather than incidental.
🏫
Daniel Bonet-Ojeda
Assistant principal, James Hillhouse High School
September 14–15, 2026
Connecticut
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Bonet-Ojeda was charged with sexual offenses involving a student after police investigated alleged conduct inside his school office. Reporting said the student referred to him as her “school dad.”
Why included: Administrative authority had allegedly become quasi-parental trust, showing how school legitimacy can create both access and emotional dependence.
🏈
Nicholas Alan Codutti
Former high-school football coach and athletic coordinator
September 25–26, 2026
Texas
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Codutti was charged with indecency with a child and sexual performance by a child after allegations involving a former student and athlete from his time at Tomball High School.
Why included: The alleged conduct was tied to coach-athlete and school access, including reported encounters on school property.
🏈
William Adam Jones
Former high-school football coach and school security employee
September 4–8, 2026
Florida
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Jones was arrested after a warrant alleged that he sexually assaulted a student who had been working under his supervision in a school athletic office.
Why included: The alleged victim was under his school-based supervision, making authority and workplace access the relevant prevention issue.
🤼
Sean Sakaida
Former Moanalua High School girls’ wrestling coach
September 24–25, 2026
Hawaii / federal
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Federal prosecutors charged Sakaida with receipt and possession of CSAM after alleging that he received explicit images from a minor with whom he had frequent communications. The FBI later sought additional potential victims.
Why included: A girls’ wrestling coach held repeated youth-facing access and athletic authority, and subsequent reporting tied the investigation to an athlete he had coached.
🏫
Ruben Guzman
Middle-school assistant principal
September 23, 2026
California / federal
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Guzman was indicted for attempted sex trafficking and attempted enticement after allegedly seeking a commercial sex act with a person he believed was under 14. The person was an undercover decoy; no student was alleged to have been victimized in the charged conduct.
Why included: This is a structural-risk case: a middle-school administrator was allegedly seeking a child essentially the same age as the students over whom he held daily authority. The absence of an actual child does not erase that nexus.
Clergy / religious institutions
⛪
Jeffrey Turner Taylor
Former youth minister, The Falls Church
September 14–15, 2026
Virginia / federal
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Taylor was arrested and indicted on federal charges alleging enticement and travel for illicit sexual conduct during years in youth ministry.
Why included: Prosecutors allege that spiritual guidance, church activities, and ministry travel created trusted access to boys in the youth program.
⛪
Louie B. George II
Longtime Baptist pastor
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Texarkana police arrested George on a child sexual-assault charge involving a person who had attended his church as a child. Police said additional potential victims had been identified.
Why included: The alleged access originated inside a congregation where pastoral authority and long-term community trust can make scrutiny less likely.
⛪
Caleb Fischer Ray
Former church youth leader
September 24, 2026
Florida
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Ray was arrested on felony sex charges after police said the alleged victim first met him at church at about age nine and described a years-long grooming process before later sexual conduct.
Why included: Youth-ministry access is the core of the allegation: church familiarity, repeated contact, and a trusted youth role allegedly preceded the harm.
Law enforcement / corrections
🛡️
Kent Ian Blacklidge
Homeland Security Investigations special agent
September 5–9, 2026
Alabama
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Blacklidge surrendered after a grand-jury indictment on rape, sodomy, sexual-abuse, and incest charges involving a juvenile. Reporting said his HSI work included child-exploitation investigations.
Why included: The household allegations independently qualify the case, while his child-exploitation enforcement role adds a stark public-trust dimension.
🔒
David Perez
Former FCI Dublin disciplinary hearing officer
September 2026
California / federal
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Federal prosecutors filed charges alleging that Perez sexually abused women incarcerated at FCI Dublin while he served as a disciplinary hearing officer.
Why included: The allegations concern custodial power itself: prison authority allegedly enabled isolation and access inside an institution already marked by a broader abuse scandal.
⚖️
Eddie Wide
Former Clark County juvenile probation officer
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Wide pleaded not guilty after a grand-jury indictment accusing him of sexual misconduct involving youths he was responsible for supervising.
Why included: Juvenile probation combines state authority, private access, and control over young people whose liberty and case outcomes can depend on the officer.
Healthcare / therapy
🩺
Jason Kyle Davis
Mental-health nurse practitioner
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Davis was charged with sexual assault by a mental-health provider involving an autistic patient.
Why included: Mental-health treatment creates unusual privacy and vulnerability, making provider authority and patient dependence central to the accountability frame.
🏟️
Robert M. Murphy Jr.
Former NC State director of sports medicine and head athletic trainer
September 14–23, 2026
North Carolina
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Murphy was indicted and later arrested on numerous charges involving former NC State athletes who alleged sexual contact under the pretext of medical treatment.
Why included: Medical legitimacy embedded inside an elite athletics program allegedly created repeated access, privacy, and credibility with student-athletes.
🩺
Arpit Saxena
Former Michigan State University resident physician
September 10–25, 2026
Michigan
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Saxena was arrested and later arraigned in a sexual-assault investigation involving former patients. MSU police established a hotline and said additional reports were being evaluated.
Why included: The allegations arise from medical appointments, where professional authority and patient vulnerability are the relevant access mechanisms.
🩻
Gabriel Cruz
MRI technician
September 16, 2026
Florida
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Port St. Lucie police arrested Cruz on a felony sexual-battery charge after a hospital patient alleged she was assaulted during an MRI after receiving medication that made her significantly drowsy.
Why included: Clinical access to a medicated patient is a direct healthcare-authority and vulnerability nexus.
🧠
Remington Yhap
Psychotherapist
September 16, 2026
New York
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Manhattan prosecutors indicted Yhap on charges alleging months of sexual misconduct culminating in rape of a teenage patient during therapy.
Why included: Therapy depends on confidentiality and trust with vulnerable patients; the alleged conduct directly concerns exploitation of that professional role.
Household / caregiver authority
🏠
Jesse Daniel Skaggs
Registered nurse, former youth pastor, and parent
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Skaggs was charged after allegations involving his infant son. Court-record reporting also said he admitted to his wife that he had sexually assaulted unconscious hospital patients; those hospital allegations were under investigation and were not separate adjudicated charges at the time.
Why included: The case spans parental control, healthcare access to incapacitated patients, and prior religious leadership — three different forms of trust and authority.
🏠
Seth Day
Psychology professor and Christian author / speaker
September 24–25, 2026
Texas
Re-arrest / added chargesRegistry: No prior registration noted
Day was arrested on a child-injury charge and then charged with sexual assault of a child. His wife, Christian author Heather Thompson Day, was separately charged with injury to a child by omission; the available sources do not say that she was charged with a sexual offense.
Why included: Household authority is the primary nexus. Academic and religious public legitimacy add context, but the sexual charge against Seth should not be conflated with Heather’s separate omission charge.
🏠
Dale Robert Nixon
Adoptive father, former foster parent, church elder, and youth volunteer
September 2, 2026
Wisconsin
Re-arrest / added chargesRegistry: No prior registration noted
Prosecutors added 20 felony CSAM-possession counts after a forensic search of Nixon’s phone. He was already facing charges alleging repeated sexual abuse of his adopted daughter.
Why included: Nixon combines household control, foster/adoptive authority, and long-term church and youth-program legitimacy; the new September counts make it an in-window development.
🧸
Shannon M. Ishler
Adult with custody or control of young children
September 16, 2026
Pennsylvania / federal
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
A federal grand jury charged Ishler with production of CSAM by a person having custody or control of minors and with possession of CSAM, alleging material involving multiple toddlers in her care.
Why included: Caregiver authority and custody — not stranger access — are the central facts establishing why the case belongs in this series.
Celebrity / public profile
📱
Braden Eric Peters (“Clavicular”)
Social-media influencer
September 8, 2026
Massachusetts
Arrested / ChargedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Peters was charged with rape and drugging-related offenses in a case involving a teenager who had reportedly been paid to appear in his livestream content. His attorneys have contested the allegations.
Why included: Online celebrity, paid participation, and platform status allegedly created a relationship of access and unequal social leverage rather than an ordinary stranger encounter.
Adjudicated developments
Pleas / Convictions / Sentencings
Education
🏫
Ray Anthony Waller
Former Bullard High School teacher
September 15, 2026
California / federal
Guilty pleaRegistry: No prior registration noted
Waller pleaded guilty to federal child-exploitation offenses after admitting communications that persuaded a minor to create and send CSAM while he was a teacher at Bullard High School.
Why included: The teacher role and minor communications place the case squarely inside the school-trust and youth-access pattern.
🏫
Katherine Albarado
Former Morgan City High School teacher
September 9, 2026
Louisiana / federal
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Albarado was sentenced to five years in federal prison after a case involving communications with a 16-year-old student while she worked as a teacher.
Why included: Teacher-student access was the relationship through which the federal offense developed.
🏫
Todd Baldwin
Former high-school operations manager
September 22, 2026
California / federal
Guilty pleaRegistry: No prior registration noted
Baldwin pleaded guilty to enticement and receipt charges and admitted paying multiple students to create CSAM, including additional uncharged victims.
Why included: His school employment placed him inside a student community where institutional familiarity and youth access mattered to the offending pattern.
Clergy / religious institutions
⛪
Dwight Chris John
Former church elder
September 14, 2026
Alaska / federal
Guilty pleaRegistry: No prior registration noted
John pleaded guilty to possessing CSAM. DOJ said a child depicted in material was known to him through an institution in Mexico and that he admitted producing sexually explicit photographs during trips there. He was already serving a state sentence for sexually abusing another minor.
Why included: Religious and institutional access crossed borders and created familiarity with a vulnerable child; his prior conviction is noted without inferring an unreported registry status.
🌎
Jeriah Mast
Former Christian Aid Ministries missionary
September 8, 2026
Ohio / federal
Guilty pleaRegistry: No prior registration noted
Mast pleaded guilty to two federal counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with minors in Haiti during years that included missionary travel.
Why included: Missionary status and cross-border religious legitimacy created access to vulnerable children far from ordinary community oversight.
⛪
Eddy Noelsaint
Former pastor
September 11, 2026
Florida
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Noelsaint was sentenced to 30 years after conviction for sexual battery involving a congregant who had sought him out for spiritual guidance.
Why included: Spiritual counseling and pastoral authority created the trust relationship through which the victim approached him.
Law enforcement / corrections
🚓
Jeremy Francis Plonski
Former Minnesota State Trooper
September 8, 2026
Minnesota / federal
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Plonski was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison for production and distribution offenses. DOJ said he produced 23 videos and wore his State Patrol uniform in some while sexually abusing the minor victim.
Why included: This is an unusually direct authority nexus: the uniform and badge legitimacy were literally present within part of the offending conduct.
🔒
Danny L. Spyker
Former federal corrections officer and cook supervisor
September 14, 2026
Illinois / federal
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Spyker was sentenced to three years and five months after a jury convicted him of sexually abusing two people incarcerated at FCI Thomson while they were under prison staff’s custodial, supervisory, and disciplinary authority.
Why included: The power imbalance is formal and total: incarceration placed the victims under the authority of the institution and its employees.
Household / caregiver authority
🧸
Trinity Joy Johnson
Caregiver
September 15, 2026
Florida / federal
Guilty pleaRegistry: No prior registration noted
Johnson pleaded guilty to federal production, distribution, and possession charges after admitting that she created exploitative material involving a toddler she was supposed to be caring for.
Why included: Ordinary caregiving trust supplied the access; no institutional title or stranger contact was necessary.
🏠
Andrew Wade Case
Adult with custody and care of a child
September 8, 2026
Indiana / federal
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Case was sentenced to 27 years and three months for federal child-exploitation offenses involving a child under 12 who was in his custody and care.
Why included: The defining access mechanism was custody inside an existing caregiving relationship.
🏠
Terry Mead Jr.
Caregiver already under a sex-offender registration duty
September 16, 2026
New York / federal
ConvictedRegistry: Previously registered
A federal jury convicted Mead of sexually exploiting a four-year-old child while the child was in his care, along with distribution and possession offenses. DOJ said he was under a duty to register at the time.
Why included: Mead is an important comparison case because he was already subject to registration, yet the relevant opportunity still arose through private caregiving access.
🏠
Keynan Santos
Adult caregiver already subject to lifetime registration
September 24, 2026
Indiana / federal
SentencedRegistry: Previously registered
Santos was sentenced to 44 years and one month after pleading guilty to child sexual-exploitation offenses and committing a felony while required to register. DOJ said the child was under 12 and in his care and custody.
Why included: Like Mead, this case shows that a registry can coexist with serious private caregiving access; the preventive failure was not simply lack of public identification.
🏠
Jesse Lane Mitchell / Jacklyn Paige Roberts
Live-in caregiver and children’s mother
September 28, 2026
Oklahoma / federal
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Mitchell was sentenced for coercion and enticement involving a preteen he was caring for while the child’s mother was incarcerated. Roberts was separately sentenced after admitting she knew of the abuse and continued allowing Mitchell access to the children.
Why included: This case combines household caregiving authority with an admitted failure by another responsible adult to remove access after learning of abuse.
Youth sports / trusted adult
🥊
Willie Torres-Gerena
Former boxing coach and trusted father figure
September 3, 2026
Puerto Rico / federal
ConvictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
A federal jury convicted Torres-Gerena of transporting a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. DOJ said the former boxing coach was a trusted father figure to the 16-year-old victim.
Why included: The relationship was not stranger contact; coaching familiarity had developed into father-figure trust.
Politics / civic leadership
🏛️
Justin Eichorn
Former Minnesota state senator
September 23, 2026
Minnesota / federal
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Eichorn was sentenced to 16 months after pleading guilty to attempted possession of CSAM stemming from an undercover operation in which he believed he was communicating with a 17-year-old girl.
Why included: His elected office did not create the decoy contact, so this is not a child-access case like Guzman. It belongs through the separate public-trust and civic-legitimacy lane: a sitting state senator held significant public authority when the conduct occurred.
Celebrity / entertainment power
🎬
Harvey Weinstein
Film producer and entertainment-industry power broker
September 23, 2026
New York
SentencedRegistry: No prior registration noted
Weinstein was sentenced to 15 years in state prison following his 2025 retrial conviction for a criminal sexual act.
Why included: The accountability relevance is status-based access: industry power, professional gatekeeping, and elite social legitimacy were central to the broader pattern of repeated opportunity described in years of reporting and litigation.
Formal non-criminal accountability
Civil / Administrative Actions
Youth sports / business legitimacy
👟
Nike Elite Program / National Scholastic Athletics Foundation
Elite high-school athletics program and event organizers
September 16, 2026
Oregon / federal civil lawsuit
Civil lawsuit filedRegistry: No prior registration noted
A federal lawsuit alleged that an underage elite athlete was sexually assaulted while attending a Nike-backed event in Beaverton and that the program failed to provide adequate safeguards. The allegations remain unproven civil claims.
Why included: The accountability question is organizational control over an elite youth environment: who created the setting, who supervised it, and what safeguards existed before the alleged harm.
Clergy / religious institutions
⛪
Archdiocese of Chicago
Catholic archdiocese
Institutional settlementRegistry: No prior registration noted
The archdiocese reached settlements totaling about $5.4 million with nine people who accused eight priests of childhood sexual abuse. Reporting noted that four of the eight priests were not on the archdiocese’s public list of clergy it deemed credibly accused.
Why included: The settlements are accountability events in their own right, while the gap between settled allegations and an institution’s own public accounting raises a separate transparency question.
Education / Title IX oversight
🏫
Virginia Beach City Public Schools
Public school division
September 17, 2026
Virginia / federal administrative
Resolution agreementRegistry: No prior registration noted
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced a resolution agreement after determining that the district had failed to adequately investigate and record reports of sexual misconduct against students during the reviewed period.
Why included: This is prevention infrastructure: reporting, investigation, recordkeeping, training, and institutional response are exactly the systems meant to act before repeated harm becomes normalized.
Systems, concealment, and oversight failure
Institutional Shielding & Findings
Education / alleged concealment
🏫
Michael Raymond Roell / Wendy Bailey
Elementary teacher and former principal
September 16–18, 2026
Texas / federal
Charged / IndictedRegistry: No prior registration noted
A federal grand jury indicted Roell and former principal Wendy Bailey on an alleged scheme to conceal Roell’s prior abuse and misconduct history so he could obtain a special-education teaching position in another district.
Why included: The indictment is about the alleged shielding mechanism itself — the kind of “passing the trash” failure that can move risk between schools while formal background systems appear satisfied.
Clergy / systemic findings
⛪
Fall River, Springfield, and Worcester dioceses
Catholic dioceses reviewed by the Massachusetts Attorney General
September 30, 2026
Massachusetts
Investigative reportRegistry: No prior registration noted
The Massachusetts Attorney General released a major report identifying more than 270 Catholic clerics accused of sexually abusing nearly 1,000 children and documenting institutional failures across three dioceses.
Why included: The point is not a single criminal case. It is a state-level accounting of how institutions handled allegations over decades and where internal systems failed to protect children.
Higher education / institutional response
🎓
Cornell University / Chi Phi fraternity
University and fraternity accountability matter
September 16 & 28, 2026
New York
Investigation reopenedRegistry: No prior registration noted
A civil lawsuit alleging a 2024 gang rape at a fraternity was followed by the reopening of the criminal investigation and plans to present the matter to a grand jury. Cornell said its own Title IX process had produced sanctions; the accused have disputed the allegations.
Why included: The September development raises questions about how a university, fraternity, campus process, and local criminal-justice system each responded to a serious allegation inside an institutionally created social environment.
Youth sports / fragmented oversight
🏐
Ryan Richardson
Volleyball coach previously banned by SafeSport
September 1, 2026
Texas / federal investigation
Investigative reportRegistry: No prior registration noted
ProPublica reported that Homeland Security Investigations opened a child- exploitation probe after earlier reporting showed Richardson continued coaching teenage girls despite a SafeSport finding that made him permanently ineligible.
Why included: This is a systems story about fragmented youth-sports governance: a formal misconduct ban did not necessarily end access because other organizations and structures could still permit coaching.
Legal and registry note
Arrests, charges, indictments, civil allegations, and investigative findings are not convictions. Defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court. Civil and institutional findings should be read according to their own legal posture and source language.
Registry-status notes are limited to reviewed public source material. “No prior registration noted” means the cited sources reviewed for this roundup did not identify a prior registration history; it is not an independent nationwide registry search. Under the series display convention, entries whose sources do not mention registry status are also displayed as “Registry: No prior registration noted.” Only Terry Mead Jr. and Keynan Santos are identified in the cited sources as already subject to registration requirements before the September event.
