A licensed social worker pleaded guilty to receipt and distribution of child pornography in federal court in Central Islip on Wednesday, June 18, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Renee Hoberman of Plainview faces a minimum five-year prison sentence and a maximum of 20 years.
“The defendant, a licensed social worker, admitted to distributing extremely vile and unthinkable videos depicting the horrific sexual abuse of babies. The videos the defendant distributed and sought for her own perverse pleasure showed the most innocent members of our society being restrained and violently raped,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said.
Hoberman admitted to using encrypted social media messaging applications to upload, receive and trade digital videos and images depicting minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, including several videos of infants six months to one year of age being physically restrained and raped by an adult male as the infants cried and frantically screamed for the duration of the videos, according to court filings and on the record testimony.
Hoberman also engaged in multiple online “chats” concerning child sexual molestation, which included Hoberman posing as the father of several minor children, claiming to have sex with the children and punishing them by getting naked, stripping the children naked, and spanking them while the other children watched, according to court filings and on the record testimony.
Hoberman invited another user to visit “his” family in New York to spank and sexually abuse the children, the court filings said. In addition, Hoberman described sexually abusing “his” children and their friends, and then uploaded and sent two videos containing child sexual abuse material, claiming that these videos depicted Hoberman’s own children, the court filings said.
According to public records and as alleged in court documents, during the same time period that Hoberman was distributing child sexual abuse material online, she was also working as a therapist with an organization based in Melville, serving children up to the age of 17.
Hoberman is a former Adelphia University graduate who began working at HealthFire Psychology in Pennsylvania in December 2022.
The U.S. Department of Justice said this prosecution is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices, the project marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.
