(Chris Parker, Headline USA) A transgender activist who received accolades for his work from the New York Times is now facing felony charges for alleged sexual abuse against a minor, reported Big League Politics.
Carlos Arturo Aparicio Hernandez of Taylorsville, Utah, is facing a total of 16 felony counts after exploiting and abusing a 15-year-old teenager. The charges include multiple accounts of aggravated sexual extortion, forcible sodomy, forcible sexual abuse, enticing a minor, and sexual exploitation of a minor.
Hernandez first contacted the victim via social media while pretending to be a teenage girl. He used the guise to convince the minor to send explicit photos of himself. Hernandez used Facebook to gain the minor’s trust over time, before suggesting that the two meet in person.
Those photos were later used to blackmail the teenager. Hernandez allegedly convinced the victim to visit him at his house. The teen wasn’t aware of Hernandez’s true identity until he arrived. Hernandez then threatened to make the explicit images public unless he complied with his demands.
Hernandez then sexually assaulted the child for the first of what would become three occasions. Each time, Hernandez recorded the encounters with his phone.
That footage was used as evidence after detectives served a search warrant. Detectives posed as the teenager using his Facebook account to set up what would have been the fourth encounter. Hernandez agreed to meet at the location, where he was arrested.
Hernandez originally migrated to the US from El Salvador. He used claims of brutal LGBT persecution to help streamline his path to asylum. He then gave a speech to the House Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee in 2019 about his alleged persecution in El Salvador and abuse from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His request for asylum was approved soon after.
Hernandez is awaiting trail at the Salt Lake County Jail.
