Former CEO pleads guilty to child porn charges after relative finds hard drive
Yates is the former CEO of My Faith Votes – a group that encourages Christians in America to vote in every election.
When was Yates arrested?
According to the USA Today report, Jason Christopher Yates was first arrested in October 2024. My Faith Votes confirmed that he had served as the nonprofit's CEO till August 2024.
'In early August 2024, the My Faith Votes board of directors separated Jason Yates from My Faith Votes and board member Chris Sadler assumed the position of Acting CEO," My Faith Votes said in a statement to Religion News Service. "Over the last three months Chris has been working with the dedicated My Faith Votes team to encourage millions of Christians to vote, pray and think biblically about this election in America.'
How was his crime discovered?
On July 31, 2024, an individual gave the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension a hard drive containing images of child abuse.
The person claimed they had received the hard drive from a relative of Yates's who 'accidentally discovered it' inside a dresser in his office.
Yates's relative apparently chanced across the hard drive and when they tried connecting it to their computer for more storage, they discovered it contained child pornography.
When agents met Yates in September, he confirmed that the child abuse images on the hard drive did not belong to the relative who found them. Yates also told Minnesota agents that he had a prior conviction for possessing child sex abuse images, but it had been expunged from his record.
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In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the victory of Suresh Gopi, an actor-politician contesting on a BJP ticket from Thrissur, a constituency with a significant Christian population, proved that the efforts have been in the right direction. According to the CSDS-Lokniti post-poll survey, a significant five percent of Christians in Kerala voted for the BJP in the LS polls in 2024, when the party opened its account in the state, and its vote share increased to 16.68 percent last year from 13 percent in 2019. The party also received 32 percent of the Hindu Ezhava and 45 percent of the Nair votes. Now, the panchayat election is coming up in Kerala at the year-end, and the state elections are scheduled for 2026. 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The BJP is a big organisation, and some may not have fully understood what happened,' he said. George Kurian alleged that the Congress and the CPI(M) have politicised the issue for their benefit, especially since the BJP recently gained a 'Christian face' as an MP, with support for the BJP growing in the Christian community. Still, Kurian emphasised that the community knows what the BJP has already done for them. (Edited by Madhurita Goswami) Also Read: Negotiations for Kerala nurse: SC allows Nimisha council to approach Centre for Yemen travel
