A BuzzFeed feature story from 2018 a couple of journalist who told a gaggle of schoolchildren that he was gay was taken down only a day after it was announced that he had been brought up on child pornography charges.
Slade Sohmer, 44, the previous editor-in-chief of the left-leaning video-driven news site The Recount, was freed on $100,000 bail on Monday after he was charged in Massachusetts court with possessing and disseminating “lots of of kid pornography images and videos.”
He has pleaded not guilty to 2 counts of possession of kid pornography and two counts of dissemination of kid pornography.
In May 2018, BuzzFeed News wrote up an item based on a viral social media thread that Sohmer posted to X, the platform that was then referred to as Twitter.
Sohmer’s X account has since been deactivated.
The story, which remains to be available on the Wayback Machine web archive, was titled “People Are Touched By This Author’s Conversation With A Bunch of Fourth Graders.”
Slade Sohmer, 44, the previous editor-in-chief of the left-leaning video-driven news site The Recount, was freed on $100,000 bail on Monday.Slade Sohmer/Facebook
The subheading of the story read: “Kids are books crammed with blank pages.”
Sohmer, who was 38 years old on the time, relayed a story a couple of visit he paid to his mother’s fourth-grade class.
Sohmer’s mother, Susan Sohmer, worked at Latest Hyde Park Road School on Long Island, based on her social media page.
The Post left a message on Sohmer’s voicemail. BuzzFeed was not immediately available for comment.
On May 11, 2018, Slade Sohmer wrote on his social media that he was invited to his mother’s fourth-grade classroom to mark the “perfect confluence of Teacher Appreciation Week and Mother’s Day.”
He wrote that he spoke to the kids about writing.
BuzzFeed News took down a 2018 story about Sohmer’s visit to a fourth-grade classroom.REUTERS
“Outside of that, I don’t have much in common with 10-year-olds, so I used to be nervous,” he wrote.
Slade Sohmer wrote that the fourth-graders were “PSYCHED” that a “latest adult…desires to check with them.”
“So we go over to the group corner, and the 20 of them sit cross-legged in a semi-circle me within the chair,” he wrote.
Slade Sohmer then recalled the “personal questions” that he was peppered with, including “What’s the happiest moment of your life?”; “Do you’ve gotten a girlfriend?”; “Do you’ve gotten a wife or kids?”; and “Who do you reside with?”
Sohmer recalled visiting his mother’s fourth-grade classroom.
He wrote that the fourth-graders were “PSYCHED” that a “latest adult…desires to check with them!”
Sohmer recalled how he was stunned that the kids asked him about his personal life.
Sohmer’s social media posts about revealing his sexual orientation to the kids went viral.
He then wondered whether he was “about to return out of the closet to those kids.”
“At this point I looked to my mother, who form of nodded and mouthed something like ‘go ahead’,” Slade Sohmer wrote.
“So I said, ‘I live with my boyfriend’.”
After his “face reddened” and “the air flew out of the room for a split second,” Sohmer wrote that he was relieved that “none of those precocious f–kers, like, give a s–t.”
Sohmer has pleaded not guilty to possession of and dissemination of kid pornography.Ryan Kobane/BFA/Shutterstock
The BuzzFeed story was live as of Tuesday, however the link to the item was not working inside 24 hours of several news reports about Sohmer’s indictment.
The Post has sought comment from the Latest Hyde Park-Garden City Park School District.
Court documents cited by The Berkshire Eagle earlier this week allege that Sohmer’s phone contained disturbing video clips showing boys believed to be as young as three years of age being raped and compelled to perform sex acts by adults.
Assistant District Attorney Marianne Shelvey said this was one of the “egregious” cases of its kind that she has come across.
If convicted, Sohmer faces minimum mandatory sentences of 10 years in state prison if convicted of dissemination of kid pornography and five years if convicted of possession of kid pornography.
