Former Century High School diving coach now facing charges of possessing child sexual abuse material

Sep. 11—ROCHESTER — A 50-year-old Stewartville man is accused of possessing hundreds of child sexual abuse images, according to charges filed last week in Olmsted County District Court.

Brett James Maronde is facing three felony counts of possessing pornographic work of a minor under 14 years old. He is scheduled to appear in court on Oct. 4, 2023.

The Olmsted County Sheriff's Office began investigating Maronde on July 13, 2023, due in part to a cybertip from the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, a state agency that works with other law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute people accused of exploiting children on the internet.

Through the course of law enforcement's investigation, it was discovered that Maronde was a diving coach for Rochester Century High School.

Maronde resigned the day the district was notified of the investigation on August 7, 2023, according to Rochester Public Schools Superintendent Kent Pekel.

Pekel said no notification was given to families because Maronde had not been arrested and, being that he was no longer employed with the school, there was no relationship the district would need to terminate or inform people about.

"We don't notify when someone is just being investigated," Pekel told the Post Bulletin.

The district did not find any evidence that Maronde had looked at any child sexual abuse material on school electronics or that he had any complaints filed against him.

"We take this incredibly seriously," Pekel said. "And so the minute we get an accusation of this type, we investigate, put on leave, we take whatever action we can. In this case, law enforcement was in the lead and it looks like they did their job, unfortunately, finding something that was very disturbing."

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Cyber Tipline received

80,000 reports a day in 2021.

While the reports do include acts of sex trafficking and molestation, 99% of them are reports of suspected CSAM, according to NCMEC.

The U.S. accounted for 30% of the internet's CSAM URLs in 2021,

surpassing the Netherlands as the worldwide leader,

according to an annual report from the Internet Watch Foundation, a United Kingdom-based watchdog of online child sexual abuse.

"It's a huge problem," Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem

told the Post Bulletin in 2022.

He added it's grossly under investigated due to the huge amount of resources law enforcement needs to even uncover these incidents to begin with. "Frankly there's no law enforcement agency that has those types of resources to really truly get to the bottom of it."

Olmsted County Sheriff's Capt. Tim Parkin said Maronde has been working with law enforcement and the county attorney's office.

The Rochester Police Department also offered its help in the investigation, Parkin said, who later added some of the children in the material found in Maronde's possession are of children previously identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

According to the criminal complaint:

An RPD investigator originally received the cybertip relating to child sexual abuse material on June 12, 2023, that was uploaded to Bing Image on April 2, 2023.

The investigator confirmed the file was child sexual abuse material and that an IP address associated with the account was connected to Maronde's Stewartville address.

Law enforcement found at least 250 files of suspected child sexual abuse material on Maronde's electronic devices during a July 13, 2023, search of his residence.

Police noted one of the devices had bookmarked a Russian photo-sharing website commonly associated with sharing child sexual abuse material.

A detective also found similar files on three of Maronde's devices that have been accessed going back to 2011.

The files depict the sexual abuse of children between approximately 4 months old to 8 years old.

Those experiencing sexual exploitation can call a 24-hour crisis line at 507-289-0636 to speak to someone who can direct you towards help.

Jordan Shearer contributed to this story.