Long Island Therapist Charged With Distributing Child Sex Abuse Imagery

Renee Hoberman, a licensed social worker on Long Island, used messaging platforms to share graphic videos of infants being abused, prosecutors said.

A child therapist on Long Island has been charged with distributing sexual abuse imagery of children as young as infants on social media, according to a federal complaint.

The therapist, identified as Renee Hoberman, 36, of Plainview, N.Y., appeared in court in Central Islip on Wednesday before Magistrate Judge Arlene R. Lindsay, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York. The judge ordered that Ms. Hoberman be held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Federal prosecutors said that over several months this year, Ms. Hoberman, a licensed social worker who also goes by Rina, used messaging apps to upload sexually abusive images of minors, including videos of a man raping infants a year old or younger.

As recently as Oct. 16, the complaint said, she uploaded the images to several “chats” on the messaging app Kik, claiming to be a man with several young children. She described punishing the children with sexual assaults, the complaint said, and shared two videos depicting the abuse of children whom she said belonged to the man she claimed to be. She also invited another person in the chat to visit and “spank the children,” the complaint said.

Ms. Hoberman has not been charged with producing child sexual abuse imagery, and the complaint does not indicate that she was involved in the abuse.

Ms. Hoberman’s public defender, Evan Sugar, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Her brother and father, reached by phone on Wednesday evening, both declined to comment.

“Together with our law enforcement partners, we will relentlessly pursue predators who victimize children and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” the U.S. attorney, Breon Peace, said in a statement, adding that the investigation was continuing.

According to the complaint and a company webpage that was removed after the charges were announced, Ms. Hoberman worked as a therapist for children 17 and under at a mental health provider called LifeStance Health in Melville, N.Y.

In a statement on Wednesday evening, LifeStance Health described Ms. Hoberman as a “part-time provider” at its Melville office and said she had been fired.

“We take this matter extremely seriously and have immediately terminated the provider and are working with patients to transfer care to other providers,” the company said. “We have not received any information from authorities indicating that any patients have been impacted by the alleged activity,” LifeStance added.

Ms. Hoberman worked at elementary schools and mental health clinics before becoming a licensed social worker, according to her LifeStance bio page. A Facebook page for Ms. Hoberman said that she had attended Adelphi University and Queens College and previously worked at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville. Northwell Health, which runs the hospital, said that Ms. Hoberman had not been a Northwell employee since 2021.

The charges against Ms. Hoberman stemmed from an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s investigations unit, according to the complaint. A tip line for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children forwarded numerous tips to law enforcement about images of child sexual abuse that had been uploaded by social media accounts connected to Ms. Hoberman from early June through mid-October, the complaint said.

The authorities investigated 14 tips submitted by Kik Messenger about sexual abuse imagery posted by accounts that were associated with email addresses that investigators believed belonged to Ms. Hoberman. Investigators also found that several of the accounts were created using an IP address linked to an internet account that was registered to Ms. Hoberman’s residence.

Ms. Hoberman was arrested on Wednesday morning, the complaint said. Investigators searched her home and seized several electronic devices, including an iPhone that she admitted was hers, which contained several videos of child sexual abuse in a hidden photos folder and sexual images of children shared with others on a Telegram account, according to the complaint.

Ms. Hoberman admitted to using several accounts to upload sexual images of children to Kik, Telegram, Discord and WhatsApp, the complaint said.