Sheriff seeks help ID'ing suspects in sexual assaults

The Los Angeles County sheriff's office has put out an unusual press release based on anonymous (and unreleased) video footage reportedly showing at least ten severely disabled women being sexually assaulted by four men. Investigators are looking for the public's help and included a direct message to the unknown source of the video, which was contained on a computer hard drive.

The Sheriff’s Department recently acquired a computer hard drive from an anonymous source. It contains over 100 hours of video of a sequence of at least ten female adult victims being sexually assaulted by at least eight men. There are several locations depicted but at least one location appears to be a residential care facility.

All of the victims appear to be severely disabled. The extremely disturbing videos are not being released to the public, but photos from portions of the video are being released in an effort to identify some of the suspects and at least one room depicted. Composite drawings of four of the suspects have been made based upon video images, in order to help identify them.

Images of the victims are not being released. It is not yet known who the suspects or victims are, or where and when these sexual assaults occurred.

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Detectives from the Special Victims Bureau are concerned that these sexual assaults might still be occurring, said Sergeant Dan Scott. "The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department welcomes information that can lead to stopping these criminals,” he said. A special request comes from detectives to the anonymous person who sent us the video: Please use Crimestoppers, a totally anonymous communication system, to contact us. We would very much like to ask you a few important questions about how these videos were acquired and where they came from.