Ex-Miami mayoral aide and TV reporter Rene Pedrosa sentenced to 6 years in child-porn case

Rene Pedrosa, a former senior aide to Miami’s mayor, stood up in federal court Monday and apologized for the crime of engaging in a sexual manner with a 16-year-old boy who met him for a job interview at City Hall.

The boy later sent electronic images of his private parts by cell phone to Pedrosa.

“I was the adult in the room,” Pedrosa, choking up, told a federal judge. “I should have done more, should have said more, and I didn’t, judge.”

U.S. District Judge Robert Scola gave Pedrosa a six-year prison sentence — more than the mandatory minimum punishment of five years for his offense but far less than the 15 years sought by prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In weighing his decision, Scola noted Pedrosa’s case was “very serious,” going beyond a “mere possession” of child pornography to “contact with a minor.”

Pedrosa, who previously worked as a Spanish-language TV news reporter before joining Mayor Francis Suarez’s staff as communications director in 2019, pleaded guilty in May to a single charge of receiving child-porn images from the teen in a plea agreement. As part of that deal, more serious charges carrying longer prison sentences were dropped. Pedrosa, 52, must surrender to prison authorities on Wednesday and after serving his term, he will face probation for 15 years. He also is going to be registered as a sex offender in Florida.

Pedrosa, who has been free on bond since his arrest in 2020, hoped to receive the mandatory minimum punishment of five years, according to arguments by his lawyers, Susy Ribero-Ayala and Rick Yabor. They said it was the “appropriate sentence.”

“I think Mr. Pedrosa recognizes that what he did was wrong, but he was not stalking [the teen],” Ribero-Ayala said, claiming this “was not a sexual assault.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Obenauf pushed for a harsher sentence, noting that “he used his position as communications director for the mayor to sexually exploit a 16-year-old boy.”

“There was a 32-year difference in age between them,” Obenauf said. “This was predatory behavior. ... He molested him” during a job interview in a conference room at City Hall.

At Monday’s sentencing, Obenauf read a statement by the victim, who was not present in court and apologized for not being there. He said that “fear and shame were my constant companion as I struggled with the belief that what had taken place was somehow my fault.”

“As a closeted gay man at the time, I was taken advantage of in a way that still haunts me today,” he said in the statement. “His abusive behavior left me feeling helpless and vulnerable, and I struggle to cope with the trauma that he made me endure since the day of the assault.”

The victim’s mother, who learned of her son’s encounter with Pedrosa a few months after it happened, portrayed Pedrosa in a similar light. She said that when she first dropped off her son to meet with the then-mayoral aide at a coffee shop — before the job interview at City Hall — Pedrosa told her that he was married with a 21-year-old son.

“He wanted to make me feel comfortable,” she said.

Pedrosa’s attorneys denied he ever said anything about being married with a grown son to the mother, insisting that he has been openly gay.

Pedrosa had been a longtime TV and radio reporter, most recently working for América TeVé-Channel 41, a Spanish-language television station based in Hialeah Gardens. Suarez hired Pedrosa in early 2019 to handle his public communications.

The following year, Pedrosa was arrested and accused of going on Instagram and using his position to lure the minor to City Hall, promising him a job designing a web page, according to a factual statement filed with his plea agreement and other court records. In November 2019, Pedrosa met with the teen at a cafe in Coconut Grove to talk about the possible job. Then, on Nov. 25, the boy’s mother drove him to City Hall to talk with Pedrosa again about the job.

At that follow-up meeting, the statement says, Pedrosa groped the teen.

“During the meeting, [Pedrosa] touched the minor victim’s penis over his clothing multiple times, grabbed his buttocks, kissed [him], and placed [his] hand over [Pedrosa’s] clothed erect penis,” the statement says.

After the meeting, Pedrosa continued to communicate with the minor via WhatsApp, an internet messaging system.

“During a WhatsApp conversation that occurred on December 22, 2019 ... [Pedrosa] knowingly received close-up visual depictions of the minor victim’s naked penis and body that the [teen] took while showering,” the statement says. “The images depicted the minor victim engaged in sexually explicit conduct and therefore constitute child pornography.”

The case was originally investigated by Miami police and then taken over by the FBI, which has worked with the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Pedrosa’s prosecution.

In 2021, Miami’s city government paid $100,000 in a settlement agreement with the family of the teen who accused Pedrosa of sexual misconduct. The victim’s mother told the judge on Monday that the family donated the money to charity.