Federal prosecutors described a former Honolulu police officer as a “prolific sexual predator” who should be jailed before his trial on charges he ran a child sex-trafficking ring, produced child pornography and sexually assaulted youngsters for five years while working for the Honolulu Police Department.
Mason Jordan, 31, allegedly sexually assaulted “multiple children” including “those under his care,” according to a 14-page motion to detain him that was filed Friday in U.S. District Court. The motion lays out in detail his “duplicitousness” in allegedly using his position as a police officer and HPD resources to further his crimes.
“Jordan has been a hands-on sexual offender of multiple children for over nearly half a decade. His crimes were not opportunistic. Rather, they were part of a years-long premeditated scheme to gain access to, and the trust of, extremely vulnerable children so that he could assault them,” reads the motion by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Olson, who is prosecuting the case for the Department of Justice along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Wayne Myers. “Jordan’s experience and training as a police officer have armed him with the tools and knowledge to sabotage criminal prosecutions by, e.g., harassing witnesses.”
Jordan worked as a patrol officer in Patrol District 3, which covers the area from Red Hill to Village Park and Waipahu, from Nov. 4, 2013, until he resigned on March 26, 2021, amid an HPD investigation.
He is being held in Albuquerque, N.M., ahead of a detention hearing Tuesday.
Jordan was charged in an eight-count indictment secured May 26. He is accused of three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, two counts of sex trafficking of a child, two counts of coercion and enticement, and one count of cyberstalking for alleged incidents involving four different victims between July 18, 2016, and April 11, 2020.
Olson’s motion to keep him in custody argues he is an “extremely serious danger to members of the community, including those he has previously victimized.”
“He is a former Honolulu Police Department police officer who — while serving in that role — planned and executed complex schemes to sexually assault children, and then harassed some of those children (as well as others) online,” wrote Olson. “He has … produced child pornography and committed hands-on sexual offenses against multiple vulnerable children against their will, using elaborate ruses to gain access to them.”
The alleged incidents involved three minors and an adult female.
Jordan allegedly used verbal threats, “burner” email accounts, messaging apps and social media accounts to prevent his victims, and law enforcement, from discovering who he was, according to the motion.
“Disturbingly, he cyberstalked an adult female he first encountered in his capacity as a police officer by threatening to circulate naked photographs of her — taken while she was a child — to her family, co-workers, and friends if she did not send him new nude photographs.”
In July 2017, Jordan allegedly used a smartphone to take sexually explicit photographs of a sleeping child referred to in court documents as “Minor Victim 1.” In the photos, Jordan is seen touching and spreading the child’s genitals open. His hand, which has a distinctive scar, is visible in the photographs seized from his laptop during the execution of a search warrant at his Makakilo Drive apartment on May 22, 2020.
Jordan allegedly blacked out his hand using a photo-editing tool and texted the photos to the victim and those close to her in an attempt to harass and bully the girl into sending more nude photographs, according to the motion.
In his texts, he threatened the victim, who apparently by then was in a relationship and had her own child, if she didn’t comply, saying “I’ll make sure u lose everything” and that he would share “all the dirt on you” with child welfare officials.
When federal agents searched his HPD locker in May 2020, they found two memory sticks from 2016 that included footage of “Minor Victim 1.”
The footage, taken in 2016, was produced using a hidden camera and showed the victim naked in a bedroom and then dressing after taking a shower, according to Olson’s motion. In both videos, Jordan’s face is captured recovering the hidden camera immediately after the child leaves the room, according to court documents.
In January 2020, Jordan allegedly used an Instagram account to impersonate “Minor Victim 1” and recruit another child, “Minor Victim 2,” to work as a prostitute, authorities said.
When the second child agreed to discuss the possibility further, Jordan told her to text a fictional pimp named “Joey” and claim to be 18 years old. Jordan then pretended to be “Joey” and engaged in “extensive detailed discussions about the logistics of working for him as a prostitute,” including prices for various sex acts, according to the motion.
Following the text exchange, Jordan allegedly arranged to meet the child near the restrooms at a public park. He knew she was not 18 because he used an HPD database to run a search on her, according to Olson’s motion. Prosecutors say Jordan met up with the child at the park, sexually assaulted her and then gave her money.
Also in January 2020, Jordan allegedly used an Instagram account to impersonate “Minor Victim 1” to recruit “Minor Victim 3” to work as a prostitute, prosecutors said. Using the same fake “Joey” persona, Jordan set up a meeting with the girl at a mall, where he allegedly sexually assaulted her and then gave her money.
The girl filed a police report after the incident, and prosecutors say Jordan accessed it using his HPD credentials and tried to delete the Instagram account he had used.
Then in April 2020, Jordan allegedly used an Instagram account to impersonate “Minor Victim 1” and contacted a college student, “Adult Female 1,” whom he had met years earlier as a minor during his work for HPD. He allegedly asked her to send a text message to a telephone number linked to a texting app.
After he got her number, he used a different phone number linked to the same texting app and sent a cropped portion of a sexually explicit photograph of the college student that was taken when she was a child to her and two of her friends. Jordan allegedly threatened to send it to her family if she did not send him more nudes.
“As long as you do exactly as I say every thing is going to go in your favor and you won’t have anything to worry about,” read his text message in part. “This conversation does stay between ONLY me and you. I have some very revealing pics and vids of you. If you don’t do as I say then it will go all over the internet and to all your friends on your Instagram. Do we have a deal?”
The government wants Jordan held without bail until his trial, noting the crimes he is accused of allegedly occurred while he was serving as an HPD police officer, “trusted to protect the same people he was victimizing,” wrote Olson. “This duplicitousness, particularly in light of the serious nature of the allegations, strongly favors detention. The fact that Jordan has no criminal history merely places himself in the ‘heartland’ of child pornography defendants.”
