35°
Morgan Rothenhoefer, 24, of Mechanicsburg, has been charged with the following felonies: corruption of minors, five counts of filming a sex act of a child, deviate sexual intercourse of a child, aggravated indecent assault with a child under 13, and child rape.
Jamie Souders, 41, of Middlesex, has been charged with the following felonies: criminal use of a communication facility, corruption of minors, eight counts of child pornography, five counts of filming a sex act of a child, deviate sexual intercourse of a child, aggravated indecent assault with a child under 13, and child rape.
Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. filed a Cybertip at 9 p.m. on Tuesday, June 11 that child pornography had been uploaded to one of their cloud storage servers, according to the affidavit of probable cause. The number and IP address were traced to Souders home in the 20 block of Buckeye Lane.
**WARNING THE BELOW DETAILS ARE DISTURBING**
The images the police received were of a nude girl under 10-years-old, and in one of the three photos sent the child was tied up to expose her genitalia, police detailed in the affidavit.
Officers went to Souders's home and conducted a warranted search on Tuesday, Sept. 3. When they interviewed him they learned he is the only person who lived in the home, and the only one with access to his phone.
The search yielded young girl's bikinis and lingerie; Souders claimed it was a "fetish" but when they searched the phone they found photos of young girls in the clothing, as stated in the affidavit. Those images date back to June of 2006.
On Thursday, Sept. 5, a warrant was issued to search his phone's cloud files. The videos were received by the police on Monday, Sept. 9. The videos showed an 8-year-old boy committing sexual acts with Morgan Rothenhoefer, the police detailed fisting, oral sex, sex toy use, and shotgun being held by the child and inserted into Rothenhoefer — Souders later told the police it was a water pistol although he also claimed to note remember filming the video, despite his voice being heard in the recording, according to the affidavit.
Then they found videos and photos of at least five different girls under 10 years old nude and some performing oral sex on an adult man, according to the affidavit.
All the video and photo files in the cloud search have file names with dates in May, June, and July 2024, as detailed in the affidavit and criminal complaint, although, the events filmed involving Rothenhoefer happened between February and March of 2024.
When police questioned Rothenhoefer and Souders they both claimed to not remember these acts due to Adderall, cocaine, and alcohol.
Rothenhoefer went on to explain to the police that they began involving the boy in their sex acts after he turned 8 years old. Souders claims it was Rothenhoefer's idea and he was "so drunk" he "went along with it", as stated in the affidavit.
The pair had known each other for over 15 years — meaning when Rothenhoefer was 9 years old and he was 26 years old, Souders told police, although Rothenhoefer claims it was only ten years ago, when she was 14.
Sounders admitted he has a porn addiction, he likes to see naked children, and knows what he did was wrong, according to his last interview with the police on Thursday, Sept. 12 cited in the affidavit.
**WARNING THE ABOVE DETAILS ARE DISTURBING**
Rothenhoefer is a mom with young children and she previously worked at Tender Years Inc. in Mechanicsburg according to her social media and public records. Daily Voice has reached out to the daycare for a comment on the news of her arrest. The facility's attorneys told us her clear background check came back before she started working on Aug. 7, 2024 she was terminated on Sept. 12 as soon as Tender Years learned of her arrest. They also noted, "At all times during her employment she worked pursuant to our co-teacher approach with 2 adult teachers always present with the children," and clarified that no children from Tender Years are known to have been involved in any of Rothenhoefer's criminal activities.
The pair have been held in the Cumberland County Prison, Souders on $1 million in bail and Rothenhoefer on $750,000 in bail as set by Judge David J. Rogers at their preliminary arraignments around 8:30 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 13, according to their court dockets. Their preliminary hearings were held at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 18.
A joint formal arraignment is scheduled for 8 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024.
Click here to follow Daily Voice Lititz and receive free news updates.
