ALLEGED CHILD PORNOGRAPHER ON CHILDREN MUSEUM STAFF

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

 A 26-year-old Brownsville arrested on a federal child pornography charge January 27 had been working on and off as a member of the staff of the Brownsville Children's Museum and is the the son of Coleith Molstad, Chief Executive Officer of the of the Mitte Foundation. 

Neither she nor the foundation are mentioned in any of the court documents. And calls to the Brownsville Children Museum have gone unanswered.

Donald Benjamin Molstad was charged with one count of distribution or receipt of child pornography and one count of possessing or accessing child pornography. He was arrested last Thursday.

"That's like putting the fox in the hen house," said a city staff member of his working around children at the museum for months.

Another city official said that Molstad had worked previously at the museum and that he had been rehired recently after the city received  $65 million in pandemic relief money through the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan.

"We knew nothing about the charges and I personally had nothing to do with his hiring" said City of Brownsville Commissioner Roy de los Santos, who is a member of the Mitte Foundation staff and has been active trying to promote cooperation with the city to enlarge and improve its cultural activities. "Apparently, he had been already hired there before this." 

A federal criminal complaint states that authorities found child pornography videos on a cellphone belonging  Molstad.

He appeared Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ignacio Torteya III. He was ordered held without bond until his next hearings which are scheduled for Feb. 14.

The Brownsville Herald reports that authorities said he used the Telegram app to share the videos. 

The newspaper reports that court documents indicate that the Texas Attorney General’s Office on May 25, 2021 contacted the Homeland Security Investigations and Rio Grande Valley Child Exploration Investigations Task Force with an investigative referral from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

The referral was from a cloud-based storage involving a suspect uploading multiple files of child exploitation, authorities said.

The investigation led authorities to Molstad, and on Jan. 27, special
agents with RGV CEITF conducted a “consensual interview” with the man at the Brownsville Children's Museum in Brownsville, court documents reflect.

The Herald also reported that during the interview, Molstad admitted to receiving, distributing and possessing child pornography, according to authorities. He stated “he had been downloading child pornography for approximately two years through online chat groups,” the documents state.

Through a search of Molstad’s cellphone, agents said they determined he had received or downloaded more than 200 videos of child pornography from Aug. 1, 2021 to Jan. 22, 2022, the documents state.

The videos depicted children engaged in sexual acts, officials said. “In addition, some of the videos depicted infants from approximately three to six months of age engaged in sexual acts,” according to the documents.

Molstad was taken into custody on Jan. 27.