Former Obama advisor sentenced for attempted child abuse, rape in UK sting operation

According to a release from the Bedfordshire Police Department, “In February last year, Rahamim Shy, 47, travelled from his home in New York after arranging online to meet a young girl for sex.”

Shy, who worked in a senior role in the US Treasury Department from 2008 to 2014 and coordinated the counter terror response under former President Barack Obama, travelled from New York to Bedfordshire to meet an English schoolgirl, according to the Telegraph. In the lead up to the meeting, he spent a month planning the trip, and packed a suitcase filled with toys, condoms, and other lude items, the Luton Crown Court heard.

Shy described the "unspeakable acts" he was planning on doing in graphic detail on an online forum and across messaging app to someone he believed to be the girl's grandmother, but the grandmother was actually an online decoy created by an undercover officer from Bedfordshire Police.

In his texts, he said that the girl was a "tad late" to starting sexual activity at the age of nine. He said that it would be an "honour" to be "her first.” Shy would then fly out to Gatwick on February 23 of last year and drive to Bedford to meet the girl, who was actually an undercover officer. He was then arrested.

His lawyers argued that Shy was in the US at the time of messaging and that he should be exempt from prosecution in the UK, but the crown Prosecution Service argued that English courts have jurisdiction to try offences committed abroad that would result in criminality in England.

Once in Britain, Shy attempted to delete the "depraved messages" he had sent. Other messages retried from his phone revealed he had talked about his other sexual fantasies involving children. A cache of indecent images of children were also discovered on his phone by police.

Shy was sentenced to 11 years and six months on Wednesday after being found guilty of arranging the commission of a child sex offence and possessing indecent photographs of a child.

Following his conviction, Lorraine Telford of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) condemned his actions, stating: “Rahamim Shy is a predator who was fully prepared to commit unspeakable acts against a child for his own sexual gratification,” according to the BBC.

“It was clear from his explicit conversations and items he brought to England that he had only one intention, to commit rape against what he knew was a vulnerable child. The fact the child in this case did not exist makes no difference, and it is a credit to the police operation and subsequent prosecution that Shy will no longer pose an immediate threat,” Telford added.

“All children have the right to feel safe and protected, and I hope this conviction sends a clear message that the CPS, working closely alongside law enforcement, will relentlessly pursue justice and prosecute those who seek to sexually exploit children.”