Child Sex Abuse Victim Recounts Story to Whitfield's Subcommittee
May 3, 2006
U.S. Rep. Ed Whitfield, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, on Wednesday held the third in a series of investigative hearings examining the sexual exploitation of children over the Internet. Members received testimony from a child victim who spoke of her past sexual abuse as well as federal law enforcement officials who updated the Subcommittee on their efforts to uncover and prosecute pedophiles.
On Wednesday, the Subcommittee heard from another child sex abuse victim, 13 year-old Masha Allen. At age 5, Masha was adopted from a Russian orphanage by a single divorcee living in Pennsylvania, Matthew Mancuso. During the five years she lived with Mancuso, Masha told the Subcommittee the harrowing details of how he repeatedly raped and abused her, keeping her chained to a wall in his basement and feeding her little to no food. Masha recalled how Mancuso took volumes of pictures documenting her sexual abuse and traded those images among a network of anonymous pedophiles on the Internet.
Mancuso eventually was convicted on both federal and state charges stemming from his abuse of Masha, and is currently imprisoned at a federal correctional facility in Massachusetts. Despite the fact that law enforcement discovered these crimes and successfully prosecuted Mancuso, Masha told the Subcommittee that her nightmare continues today. Usually, when a kid is hurt and the abuser goes to prison, the abuse is over. But because Matthew put my pictures on the Internet, the abuse is still going on, said Masha.