A former investigator for the New Jersey Victims of Crime Compensation Office has been charged with allegedly soliciting and engaging in inappropriate sexual communications with crime victims.

He was assigned to support investigative and enterprise reporter for NJ Advance Media, Ted Sherman has been following this story and joins me to discuss more.

Ted, thanks for joining me.

Thanks for having me.

So this man was really charged with revictimizing those who came to him as victims.

How was this all discovered?

It wasn't discovered for a long time.

And that was the problem here.

People were reporting him to to to their superiors, according to the lawsuits that we saw.

And either nothing was done about it or more.

More curiously, they didn't go to any of his other other cases to see whether he had approached other women.

You know, Ted, how far did his misconduct go?

It went four years.

It went four years.

And in terms of how long, how far it went.

If you look at the lawsuits that were filed, he was very graphic about what he was looking for.

And and he he felt no shame about anything.

At one point, according to the lawsuit, one of the lawsuits, a woman asked him, how can you be?

How can you be acting like this?

How can you be be looking to pursue women like this and he responded, One in three people, one in three women around the world have been the victims of of of domestic violence or sexual abuse.

If I if I ignored those people, I'd have nobody to date.

Wow.

How how many women are we talking about?

We don't know.

We know that there were at least four that that came to light in both the state investigation and the lawsuits that have been filed.

But there might be many more.

We just don't know.

And part of the problem is, is because this wasn't even announced when he was first arrested.

There might be a lot of victims out there and some have wondered whether whether they effectively were harboring a sexual predator.

So let's talk about what has he been charged with?

He's been charged with second degree official misconduct.

He's not been charged with sexual abuse or that these are all harassment claims.

If you look at some of the evidence that has been filed in lawsuits, a lot of it is suggestive.

There are a lot of pictures.

There are a lot of of suggestive messages.

And there are a lot of pictures you wouldn't want to show your kids.

This is terrifying.

This is gut wrenching for anyone to hear, especially those victims.

How is this going to affect this unit and for victims feeling comfortable moving forward?

That's a that's a good question, because the people that go to the victims Compensation Board or are people in need that they need, they're they're either victims of a crime or they're their family have been victims of a crime.

They're looking for mental health counseling.

Some of them some of them are looking for help cleaning up the scene of a crime.

Some of them are looking for help moving.

And this this individual was their point of contact.

And so they you know, they were supposed to trust him.

At one point, according to one of the lawsuits, when when they complained about some of the things they were seeing, they were told to go to their to their point of contact, which was in the sky.

Is there any trust left in this unit?

I don't know the answer to that.

Obviously, a lot of people who have dealt with him have no trust whatsoever.

Tough, tough story to cover.

Excellent reporting.

Thank you, Ted.

Thank you for having me.