‘Inside information into the years-long sex saga involving two former Louisville Metropolitan Police Department (LMPD) officers is now being revealed. The city commissioned former U.S. Attorney Kerry Harvey to investigate the LMPD Explorers program for children to determine if sexual misconduct, abuse, and even rape were widespread with police officers involved in the program.
Two former LMPD officers have been charged with serious crimes, as The Free Thought Project reported, and the city, with good reason, wanted to know more about how police handled the complaints from parents and reports children were being groomed, propositioned, and even raped.
As TFTP reported in October 2017:
Brandon Wood…allegedly raped a teenage boy, both in [his] car and in a residence, and filmed the crime for the purposes of producing pornography. [Kenneth] Betts and Wood were police officer mentors in the Youth Explorer Program for kids who want to one day become law enforcement officers. It was inside the mentorship program that they are accused of finding their victims.
The accusations were followed by lawsuits with one lawyer reportedly representing five victims abused by officers inside the Explorers program. Not only did parents accuse the police officers’ superiors of doing nothing about their criminal complaints, the Police Officers’ union also began to stonewall, filing a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent investigators from interviewing more cops. As TFTP reported:
Just as the investigation into alleged sex scandals involving teenage explorers and Louisville police officers was progressing, the police union stepped in and filed a lawsuit to prevent at least three other officers from testifying in the case. The River City Fraternal Order of Police (RCFOP) filed a lawsuit mid-August to prevent the officers from incriminating themselves in the involuntary interviews with a private attorney hired at the request of the mayor’s office. Officers Matthew Gelhausen, Joseff Keeling and Paul Paris were protected from being forced to give a deposition to the lawyer as a result of the lawsuit filed by their union.
Harvey was paid $140,000 to compile the report and released his findings, which took a year to complete. His team concluded that was there were indeed mistakes made in handling the criminal complaints but denied any cover-up within the department.’
