A Chicago veterinarian has been arrested for possessing and exchanging child pornography just days before he was due to fly to California to collect a baby he has purchased via surrogate. Adam Stafford King, 39, allegedly posted online about his plans to sexually abuse the infant boy once he was in his custody.
King, a veterinarian who specializes in ophthalmology, was arrested on March 22 for trading child pornography under the username @pervchiguy in a chat with an unidentified man in New York. King posted in the chat that he liked young children “in the single digits” and preferred boys. In one message, King wrote “0-9 [years old] my fav…B[oy] and g[irl], though prefer b[oy].”
He also confessed to sexually abusing his nieces and nephews, claiming that he drugged the children. He has not been charged in relation to these crimes and it is unclear if these crimes are being investigated further at this stage.
“I generally use Benadryl,” King wrote according to the 33-page complaint written by FBI Special Agent Michael Devine, “I usually double an adult dose.”
King also allegedly sent the pedophile in New York several videos of child pornography, including at least three different videos of men sexually abusing preteen boys.
The unidentified person who King corresponded with was arrested by the FBI in October of 2023. An FBI agent then assumed the person’s accounts to gather more information on his contacts and exchanged messages with King, eventually leading to his arrest.
The FBI executed a search warrant at King’s house earlier this month. Agents ultimately found King in his shower with his iPhone “despite multiple verbal announcements of the FBI’s presence,” the complaint stated.
King said in the chat in November that him and his husband were playing to purchase a baby via a surrogate mother and stated that his husband was a “non-perv” but he planned to sexually abuse the baby, due 29 March, soon after birth. “I do love the idea of inviting a buddy over when I have my boy … just has to be someone I can trust obviously,” King wrote in one message.
On two separate occasions, King sent ultrasound photos of an unborn child, which he claimed were images of the child he and his husband are expecting in the spring, according to the complaint. On December 29, King posted an image of baby outfits that appeared to have the tags still on them, including a onesie with an elephant and birds and the words “So happy together.”
“We got so much baby stuff for Christmas,” he boasted in the chat. King refused to be interviewed by police when he was arrested, but did provide the password to his phone, where agents found several of the photos matching what had been posted in the chat.
King is a well-known dog show judge and has been involved in the prestigious Westminster Kennel Club (WKC). He was scheduled to judge the toy dog category at a WKC show in May. He is also a dog breeder and operates a Havanese dog breeding kennel called “Askin Havanese.”
At his initial court appearance on Friday, prosecutors asked him to be held in custody without bond. A detention hearing has been scheduled for March 26.
Speaking with the Publica, Helen Gibson, the founder of Surrogacy Concerns, noted that a lack of safeguarding is common in the surrogacy industry. Gibson’s group, which is based in the UK, was founded to raise awareness of the negative impact of surrogacy on women and children.
“Surrogacy has none of the safeguards and background checks people are used to seeing in adoption,” she said. “This is not the first alleged case and will not be the last where predatory men seek to access babies by purchasing them from surrogate mothers.”
In 2016, a man from Australia was arrested after purchasing twin baby girls via surrogate with the intention of sexually abusing them. He was arrested after sharing videos of the abuse to pedophile friends, and was ultimately jailed for 22 years.
In another horrific case, Mark J. Newton and Peter Truong were arrested in Los Angeles in 2011 after police discovered videos of their surrogate son being sexually abused that had been circulating amongst other pedophiles. Police believed Newton and Truong had purchased the boy “for the sole purpose of exploitation.”
In 2023, social media users expressed disgust after disgraced YouTuber Shane Dawson and his husband purchased twin boys via surrogate. Dawson has a history of making sexually predatory comments about children and animals.
As previously reported by Reduxx, one of the world’s leading “surrogacy empires” had been launched by a convicted child rapist from Spain. An investigation into Barcelona-based surrogacy company Subrogalia found that founder José María Hill Prados had assisted individuals arrange fictitious marriages, falsify documents to smuggle babies out of Ukraine, and trade children for profit.
On the disturbing cases, Gibson asserted that the industry is “dangerous” in how it allows predatory men to get access to children with few safeguards, and called for a global ban on the industry.
“At the heart of this is an unborn child who has been commissioned in order to be removed from its mother at birth. There is no such thing as safe or ethical surrogacy. We need a global ban. Now.”
