Anti-trans conservative busted with child sex abuse pictures on his computer

An Indiana man with a history of posting far-right and anti-trans memes on social media has been arrested and charged with possession of child sex abuse material.

Eldon W. Phelps, 25, of Lebanon, Indiana, was arrested in August after the Boone County Sexual Assault and Child Exploitation Task Force linked him to an image of a prepubescent girl being raped by an adult man, according to the Lebanon Reporter.

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He denied “grooming” the underage girls and instead said that he was just giving them “gifts” after sexually abusing them.

In April, the task force received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that included an email address and the username “MartianMassacre Productions,” both of which were linked to an internet user who had stored the image. They were then able to link the image to Phelps via online and phone records.

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According to the Lebanon Reporter, when police questioned Phelps in August, he told them they would find more child sexual abuse material on his desktop computer. Investigators are currently performing forensic reviews of material found on the computer and other devices seized from Phelps. His trial is scheduled for December.

Following the paper’s report on Phelps’s arrest and charging, one user of X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter) posted several anti-trans memes and news stories shared by a Facebook account that appears to belong to the 25-year-old. One post featured an image of the transgender Pride flag, describing its pink, white, and blue stripes as “pervert color [sic].” Another featured a Fox News story about Bud Light’s partnership with Dylan Mulvaney, including a transphobic quote from host Greg Gutfeld.

X user Beks (@antifaoperative) described Phelps as an “Indiana libertarian.”

The Facebook account for “Eldon Wolfgang Phelps” on which the posts appeared is rife with anti-vaccine, pro-gun, misogynistic, medical misinformation, anti-immigrant, and conspiracy theory memes. The user also reposted multiple videos featuring social media personality Andrew Tate, who has been charged with rape and human trafficking in Romania.

The user also posted multiple anti-trans memes and appears to have gotten particularly worked up over the controversy surrounding Bud Light’s partnership with Mulvaney in April—around the same time the Boone County Sexual Assault and Child Exploitation Task Force received that tip that led to Phelps’s arrest.