SC legislator denied bond on charges of distributing child sex abuse material
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State Rep. Robert “RJ” May
South Carolina State Rep. Robert “RJ” May of Lexington County has been indicted on 10 federal counts of distributing child sexual abuse material.
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State Rep. Robert “RJ” May, R-Lexington, was denied bond Thursday, hours after an indictment was unsealed charging him with 10 felony counts of distributing child sexual abuse material via the internet.
May, 38, a married father of two young children, was arraigned Thursday morning before U.S. Magistrate Judge Shiva Hodges at the federal courthouse in Columbia. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
May was indicted Tuesday, June 10, by a federal grand jury.
After Thursday’s two-and-a-half hour hearing, during which Hodges heard the evidence against May, she ordered he be detained without bond pending trial. She deemed him to be a flight risk and a danger to the community.
“I’m concerned about the danger to the community specifically,” Hodges said.
She gave little weight to an assertion without evidence by May’s attorney, Dayne Phillips, that possibly an unknown person had penetrated May’s home Wi-Fi and used his internet connections to distribute child sex abuse material.
Hodges also noted that May had used aliases and a phony name in setting up various internet accounts — actions that she indicated would make it easier for him to avoid showing up for future court hearings in his case.
Hodges also observed that May had traveled several times to the South American nation of Colombia in 2023 and 2024 where he had visited Medellin and Bogata and had sex with youthful sex workers. A Homeland Security Investigations agent testified about those travels during Thursday’s hearing.
Although May is not charged with breaking any federal law while in Colombia, his ability to travel internationally was a factor Hodges said she weighed, saying he is a potential flight risk.
Wife in courtroom
Although May’s wife of nine years, Beth, was in the small courtroom, the two appeared not to exchange a glance during the lengthy hearing. She is not accused of wrongdoing. May, with shackled hands and feet in chains, sat at the defense table with his lawyer and did not look back at the audience. A burly man of medium height, May wore slip-on brown dress shoes, long gray gym shorts and a white T-shirt over his wide frame. Three U.S. Marshals Service deputies stayed close to him.
It was a far cry from the elegant and spacious House chamber, with its historic paintings, high ceiling and large electronic boards that reflect lawmakers’ votes as they go about the business of passing state laws.
May, who was the driving force behind the creation of the hardline conservative S.C. House Freedom Caucus, had a username “joebidennnn69” to distribute at least 10 videos of child sexual abuse, the indictment said.
S.C. House Speaker Murrell Smith suspended May without pay from the House on Thursday. May had attended every legislative session so far this year, his lawyer said.
A motion filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Thursday asking that May not be released on bond gives graphic descriptions of the sex acts depicted on the videos, including oral and vaginal sex performed on and by children described as “toddlers.” One young girl is directed to tell the camera “I’m a little slut” before performing a sex act on a grown man. Another video appears to show a prepubescent girl performing oral sex on an animal, “possibly a dog or a goat.”
None of the children are identified.
The legal filing also accuses May of distributing 220 different videos about 479 times over five days around early April 2024. At one point, the motion describes May sharing a video of child abuse with another user seconds after visiting a page regarding South Carolina legislation.
The motion also includes messages exchanged between the account identified as May’s and others in which the account requests “Father mom daughter” material.
“May is the father of two young children under the age of 10 with whom he lives,” the prosecutor’s motion notes. “ln other words, his Kik [app] activity reveals that he has a sexual interest in children the same age as his own children. Moreover, his Kik activity clearly demonstrates that he has a sexual interest in incest between a father (like himself) and young children (like his own children), as well as incest between young children and their mother (like his wife).”
Hiding in plain sight?
The filing also calls attention to May’s alleged secret life.
“May has lived in this community and home environment, with the outward appearance of a family man and upstanding citizen,” said the filing.
But he exploited his innocent appearance to give the impression “of law abidingness, all while he was a member of a different community that knew the real him: The community where he surreptitiously traded child pornography of prepubescent children with other like-minded pedophiles on Kik, engaged in online solicitation of prostitution in a foreign country via an alias Facebook account, and physically traveled to South America to engage in extra-marital commercial sex with these other females.”
Investigators also found at least 40 Facebook Messenger conversations between an alias account “Eric Rentling” and “female sex workers in the area around Medellin, Colombia,” according to the filing.
In 2023 and 2024, messages sent from the account in Spanish “consisted largely of arranging ‘meet up’ dates, time, price negotiations, and rules regarding the videoing of sexual encounters.”
In one exchange, the account asks in Spanish for a photo of a female and then asks “How old is she?” During the same Facebook session, the account “conducted Facebook searches on South Carolina political candidates, including [May’s] own primary opponent.”
“May used the Rentling account to set up meetings with female sex workers in advance of his travels to Medellin and Bogota,” the motion says. “It is clear that May was the person engaged in these activities because law enforcement located 9 videos on May’s laptop that showed him engaged in the exchange of money with three different females prior to him having sex with them in Colombia.”
May, who was taken into custody Wednesday at his house by Homeland Security, faces between 5 and 20 years in federal prison, a fine of $250,000, and at least five years of supervised release to follow any term of imprisonment.
Because of the graphic nature of the child sex material and the voluminous files May is alleged to have distributed, federal prosecutor Scott Matthews told Magistrate Judge Hodges he is looking at a sentence closer to 20 years than to the minimum of five.
In April 2024, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a cyber-tip from the social messaging app Kik, which flagged videos from “joebidennnn69.” The center, known as NCMEC, is the nation’s largest and most active child protection organization. The center notified South Carolina authorities, who in turn notified local federal law enforcement officials.
Testifying at Thursday’s hearing, Homeland Security Investigations agent Britton Lorenzen said investigators used search warrants to internet providers to connect the suspicious accounts first flagged by Kik to May’s home IP address and mobile device, and then to May. That way, they were able to identify at least 10 videos depicting child sexual abuse that were shared from the account, Lorenzen said.
Federal prosecutor Matthews told the judge that May often multi-tasked on his cellphone, chatting or texting his wife or friends and at the same time distributing child sex material on the internet. Those simultaneous activities on one mobile device show that it had to be May, and no one else, who distributed the material on the internet, Matthews said.
In August, HSI searched May’s house and seized a laptop, a tablet, four cellphones, four hard drives, four SD cards, two DVD-Rs and 19 thumb drives.
Only the cellphone had suspicious activity on it, Lorenzen testified.
The child sex material allegedly distributed by May took place in late March 2024 and early April 2024 over four to five days after which the account was suddenly deleted, according to Lorenzen.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthews and Dean Secor are prosecuting the case with Austin M. Berry of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation & Obscenity Section.
May was first elected to represent state House District 88 in 2020. He won a third term in November after being the lone candidate to appear on the ballot. His political consulting firm Ivory Tusk ran campaigns for conservative candidates including members of the Freedom Caucus.
In the few times May spoke during the hearing, he made brief replies, such as “Yes, your honor.”
Among those attending the hearing was state Rep. Heath Sessions, R-York, a critic of the Freedom Caucus.
After the hearing, Sessions spoke to reporters and called Phillip’s assertion that May’s Wi-Fi was hacked, “a little farfetched and a little unreasonable too, and I think the judge reached that decision too.”
“It was troubling for me that his house was searched last (August) and I had to see him on the (House) floor,” Sessions said, adding he felt “sick to my stomach” while listening to Thursday’s testimony.
After May’s arrest this week, the Freedom Caucus called for his resignation from the House.
The caucus also said May had been expelled from the group and had had no involvement in operations since August.
“The SC Freedom Caucus stands firmly for the rule of law and the protection of children,” state Rep. Jordan Pace, R-Berkeley said in a statement. “These crimes are heinous and we expect that they will be fully investigated.”
May’s attorney, Phillips, told Hodges he has not yet decided whether he will represent May through the trial. He and May will decide in the next two weeks.
Underscoring the importance of Thursday’s hearing, new U.S. Attorney Bryan Stirling was in court with several top prosecutors. It was the first arraignment Stirling had attended as U.S. Attorney, and the longtime former state Department of Corrections director shook hands with the more than a dozen journalists attending the hearing.
Afterwards, outside the courthouse, Stirling told reporters that “Everybody is innocent until proven guilty in a court or law. I would refer you to today’s testimony and the court filings, and after that, we will have no comment.”
This story will be updated.
This story was originally published June 12, 2025 at 9:34 AM.
