A former member of the community, not extremely active on GBAtemp but known for contributions to several projects on the 3DS hacking scene, Thomas Edvalson aka 'Cruel', has recently received a 20 year jail sentence for supposedly hosting a child porn site (although he firmly denied it).

Thomas Scot Edvalson, 28, appeared to be providing a website where other users could download images of child porn, according to a press release form the District Attorney’s Office. The site came complete with an online guide detailing how to use the dark web to set up a website for trading pictures of child sexual abuse.

Source: Gwinnett Daily Post
A thread was started on GBAtemp to discuss the issue a couple of months ago, before the final judgement was rendered. At the time our decision was to lock the thread up as it began to heavily derail. Some members and visitors took this as a 'cover up' and wondered why we didn't ban this guy's user account on GBAtemp.

We had long discussions in the staff forum and decided to wait for the final verdict (the appeal that is) before doing anything, thereby letting justice do its work. We banned this person from our forums immediately after we heard the final judgement and by the looks of it he won't be around again for a while. Since then, there hasn't been any new threads about the story but if there had been one, we would have allowed it for sure.

At this point we are wondering why anyone would think we are 'covering' this up? Why would we even need to? It's not like people don't know what happened already. If you have any questions, feel free to ask in this thread.

Furthermore, there is an ongoing story concerning another person, it's been posted on a Reddit thread (edit: now removed, but you can see screenshots here) and, again, we certainly won't prevent you from discussing it wherever you want just as long as you stay civil.

We at GBAtemp value freedom of speech above all, but within the boundaries of the law. If you think someone is guilty of a crime it is your duty to report it to the relevant authorities (not the GBAtemp admins, I mean the police). But otherwise let justice do its job. We do not believe that witch hunts have their place on GBAtemp.


The staff

 

[Sketchy1]

I've never understood how someone can be sexually attracted to children. Depending on the age the predator is targeting, the children can barely even talk in sentences, but yet they want to exploit the kids and take away their innocence? What is wrong with them.

I think that's the basis of why it's considered a mental disorder.
You shouldn't want to reproduce with something that can't reproduce

 

[FAST6191]

I think that's the basis of why it's considered a mental disorder.
You shouldn't want to reproduce with something that can't reproduce

Whoa there
That is rather overly broad and inaccurate at the same time.

For one many of those under age, especially those places where it is 18, are routinely biologically capable of reproducing. Such a thing is one of the major components of age of consent laws.

Secondly where does that leave gay people, and those with same sex attractions? A disorder tends to be phrased along the lines of a persistent, induced or recurring mental state in which is likely to cause harm to themselves or others.

Likewise should someone not be attracted to someone because they have aged into infertility, or are infertile because of injury, choice or chemicals?

Finally not all sex is about reproduction. Plenty of animals masturbate and engage in casual sex, even out of season. Going further the drive to have sex tends to have a biological basis. Evolutionarily speaking it is no time since humans have not routinely risked starving and thus laziness and all manner of things to avoid energy expenditure became survival traits, sex is an expensive hobby from a calories consumed standpoint when I am otherwise on the edge of starvation so the drive has to be high.

 

[The Catboy]

His brother CLAIMS he was wrongly convicted. That's a big difference. Not to mention he has no proof that he's innocent too.

No, he was charged years ago, and has now been convicted. Those are two entirely different things.

Supposed brother.
He still hasn't come on to refute my comments and I honestly don't think that member was really his brother. Their statements were holier than the Pope

 

[britain4]

I've never understood how someone can be sexually attracted to children. Depending on the age the predator is targeting, the children can barely even talk in sentences, but yet they want to exploit the kids and take away their innocence? What is wrong with them.

That's a very narrow minded viewpoint. Just because you don't understand something doesn't make it wrong.

Who you are attracted to is something that you have no control over and I'm sure the vast majority of people who are attracted to children would not choose to be that way, nor would the vast majority of them ever abuse a child. We only ever hear about the times someone actually does.

You can never brand someone "wrong" for what their sexual orientation is, just how they choose to act upon it.

 

[Sketchy1]

For one many of those under age, especially those places where it is 18, are routinely biologically capable of reproducing

woah there lol.
was referring to pre-pubecent children who by definition cant.
and those who have aged to infetrility already are well past the age of consent
guess you would be right with gays tho

 

[pcs3rd]

They can't exactly prove that he was hosting it himself, it's more his negligence of maintaining his site that did him in (assuming his spam countercase was true)

Plus it was an ongoing case, so for them to find this now despite him being charged years ago, and the fact that he went to a computer despite him being legally obligated not too, puts enough doubt in a jury's mind to convict him

yea.

 

[VashTS]

holy shit just realized who this was. dang hope this guy gets destroyed in prison, #fuckpedos

 

[air2004]

The title of this should be changed from suspected to convicted.
He's been found guilty so this Scumbag needs to be called what he is.

 

[britain4]

holy shit just realized who this was. dang hope this guy gets destroyed in prison, #fuckpedos

Yup from the look of the guy he's going to have no chance.

 

[Kenion]

I know this because I'm his brother. He didn't have a second site. He only had that one programming site.

He couldve hosted the onion site secretly.

 

[Sketchy1]

The title of this should be changed from suspected to convicted.
He's been found guilty so this Scumbag needs to be called what he is.

found guilty dosent nessicerilly mean he did it tho
false convictions exist

 

[The Catboy]

He couldve hosted the onion site secretly.

I am almost 100% sure that user is not actually his brother and is a Temper hiding behind a VPN. I was able to completely destroy their posts a few pages back.
Something tells me that they are just a Temper who wanted to clear Cruel's name and were hoping to sway the thread in their direction. When they failed to do so, they simply stopped showing up.

Side-rant
Also, I've been watching this thread and more things bother me. One thing I am seeing a lot of is people talking about the actual mental disorder behind pedophilia. Now there actually is a mental/medical disorder that can be treated and has a moderate success rate. Often times people who have this disorder often actually avoid drawing attention to themselves for obvious reasons. Those who are often caught and arrested, often do their best to keep out of the public eye because again, obvious reasons are obvious.
The thing about TheCruel is, he very much did not hide who he was. He proudly signed his real name to his projects and even published his projects with his name signed on a public forum. He doesn't show any signs of remorse, no signs of subtlety, and not signs of shame. He's even smiling in his mugshot, a mugshot of someone arrested for CP and he's smiling! This is very clearly not a man suffering from mental disorder nor ashamed of his crimes. Even someone innocent wouldn't be smiling under these kinds of chargers.
Just looking at his mugshot alone, you tell this man is a horrible person. He very clearly knew what was doing was wrong and very clearly doesn't care. He's not suffering from any mental disorder, he's just a sick pedophile.

found guilty dosent nessicerilly mean he did it tho
false convictions exist

Expect he was guilty. They found CP on his computer and very clearly found enough evidence to sentence him to 20 years.
In a case like this, it would have been extremely easy to prove him innocent. In fact, I went on a rant about that
This post was directed at the Temper claiming to be his "brother."

You know, your claims are complete BS and I won't let them sit there and gather Likes from people who won't take the time to actually think about these claims.
First, you keep saying his site was spammed. But you know what? I am one of the Admin over at Filetrip and do you know what we have? A site log, which is just logs all of the activity on the site. In fact, every single site I've ever been an admin of has a site log. As well logs are also stored locally on the server itself. This means that if an external person(s) spammed the site with CP, that would have been logged and obviously the police would have checked those logs the second they started their investigation. If the site wasn't active at the time of the spam, these images would have been easily found in the log and being that it was well over 100 images, they would have taken up a good chunk of the log. This is how servers work, nothing is added to them that isn't logged by the server itself.
As well his servers would have been taken, but that's very clearly not the case. If he was only running 1 site and it's that site, then that site should be down. Yet the site is still running, meaning the servers were left in their place. They also would have taken his domain and it would directed to a page with a police warning saying the site was taken by the police. This only means that the servers and site used in the courts was not that site. Which only means that was indeed running a separate site with a different server(s.)
You keep bringing up the spam argument, but that argument is complete bullshit. Why? Because according to the actual court record it wasn't just found on his servers, but also on his own personal computer. So if it was spam, they sure did an amazing job spamming every computer he owned.
Unorganized, yet took 4 years? That's more than enough time for them to have searched his entire site, all of the logs, his emails. etc. In other words, your argument of "it's spam" doesn't hold up to the time frame spent for the investigation. Not to mention it only took me less than one night to poke holes through both sides of the argument. His lawyer had 4 years to poke these holes. If he truly was innocent, 4 years would have easily been enough time to have proven his innocence. Hell, one minute of skimming the site's log would have proven him innocent. But again, you still need to account for the CP found on his personal computer.

What I am getting at, is that your statements don't add up. They show a gross misunderstanding of the legal system, they show a complete ignorance of an actually well documented case, they show a complete ignorance of site admining, and so much more. Every statement is full of holes that honestly even makes your relationship to him completely debatable. There is no way anyone could sit through the courts for 4 years and lack so much knowledge of the case on hand. Unless you just sat there and intentionally ignored everything going on. Either way, your statements are complete bunk.

 

[Sketchy1]

Expect he was guilty. They found CP on his computer and very clearly found enough evidence to sentence him to 20 years.
In a case like this, it would have been extremely easy to prove him innocent. In fact, I went on a rant about that
This post was directed at the Temper claiming to be his "brother."

No I actually believe he was guilty, cauae I mean, he looks the part, as you said "unremorseful" plus the fact that this casewas going on for a while, just was explaining that guilty isn't the same as beyond the shadow of a doubt

 

[Zkajavier]

I am almost 100% sure that user is not actually his brother and is a Temper hiding behind a VPN. I was able to completely destroy their posts a few pages back.

He's even smiling in his mugshot, a mugshot of someone arrested for CP and he's smiling!

Just looking at his mugshot alone, you tell this man is a horrible person.

he's just a sick pedophile.

I can see you are really entitled to your opinion. But all I can read from you are pure assumptions. You can't and won't ever know if he really was innocent as he claimed, because you are not him.
If that other guy was not his brother, what is he getting from defending him? To me it would only make sense if it was Cruel under a different account.

Regardless of whatever reason he was convicted for, we should just respect the guy for its contributions to this community and how he handled his projects here.

 

[The Catboy]

I can see you are really entitled to your opinion. But all I can read from you are pure assumptions. You can't and won't ever know if he really was innocent as he claimed, because you are not him.
If that other guy was not his brother, what is he getting from defending him? To me it would only make sense if it was Cruel under a different account.

Regardless of whatever reason he was convicted for, we should just respect the guy for its contributions to this community and how he handled his projects here.

I have my reasons behind my certainty that that account doesn't actually belong to his "brother." Unfortunately the user has failed to return and thus I can't contact them directly, so I am publicly calling them out until they answer me. I can not publicly disclose these reasons because I do not have the authority to do so.
What do they have to gain by defending Cruel? Most likely just a desperate attempt to sway the thread to pitying him instead of condemning Cruel's actions. Cruel was an extremely popular member and his contributions to the scene no doubt would have gained him a very dedicated following. I mean look at their posts, it's just generic posts with a few bits of misinformation to paint Cruel as an innocent victim. It's almost obvious that they have nothing to do with the case nor Cruel and I spent a good amount of time poking holes in their statements.
I respect Cruel's projects, but I will not allow someone to purposely mislead the Temp. Also I highly doubt it was Cruel under a different account. It would have taken 5 minutes to clear up his name.

 

[Dylan the Tactician]

JESUS
I left for what a month and some days change and this comes up

Anyways, my little small bit to add to this is that, people, you're entitled to your opinion, but that doesn't mean you have to be rude about it. I wouldn't be saying this if I couldn't pick multiple examples of this out, so please take this to heart.
Secondly, I'm sure this unsettles most people (and if it doesn't unsettle you, maybe you ought'a get that checked out), but here's my BIG bit to add to this:
Just because you're able to judge, does it mean you should? And if you're one of those people who can't help it, I know personally I'm one of those, does it mean you have to publicly share your judgement over a situation that you/we very, very obviously don't have all the facts about? Of course the answer is no, but my main point here is that drawing conclusions with what you know is fine but trying to say someone is "Innocent" or "Guilty" when you don't know everything is just plain wrong.

Also, as an important tidbit, I want to make it extra clear that the staff members obviously know more than us and have more in-depth understandings of this event, most notably Costello and Crystal. They are not the targets of my little rant, but rather the random people who're popping on and making snide judgements without a second thought about what they're saying.

Usually, I'd just ignore something like this and move on, but due to the nature of this thread I felt extremely disturbed by the behaviors of my fellow GBAtemp members and decided against my better judgement to step out and say something. I also understand that this comment in itself is extremely hypocritical, as I'm judging all of the people that are judging Cruel of whom I know nothing about, but it's to get a point across.

tl;dr, don't make an ass out of yourself by judging people you don't know over the "0-accountability" place known as the internet (though this thread in itself proves that "0-accountability" is a complete and utter lie.)

--EDIT--
Forgot to add this but i felt it basically describes the non-staff comments on this thread

 

[smf]

He doesn't show any signs of remorse, no signs of subtlety, and not signs of shame. He's even smiling in his mugshot, a mugshot of someone arrested for CP and he's smiling! This is very clearly not a man suffering from mental disorder nor ashamed of his crimes.

Those are signs that he IS suffering from a mental disorder. He just has the bad kind of mental disorder that people hate you for, instead of the good one where people feel sorry for you.

No I actually believe he was guilty, cauae I mean, he looks the part, as you said "unremorseful" plus the fact that this casewas going on for a while, just was explaining that guilty isn't the same as beyond the shadow of a doubt

Because the way you look and the case going on for a long time are a guarantee of guilt. They should just get rid of jury's and evidence, because it's clear cut. Obviously if he was smart dressed and the case went to court immediate he would be innocent right?

If you were in court for a crime you didn't commit then you would not be remorseful.

Expect he was guilty. They found CP on his computer and very clearly found enough evidence to sentence him to 20 years.

Which computer do you mean by "his computer", the only evidence I have seen so far was using that to describe the server he rented. Obviously it's impossible for anyone else to use a computer that you own. Malware is a lie, because only software that you authorise can be installed on a computer.

When emotions run high, like they do in these cases, then it would be very easy to get a court to convict for 20 years without much robust evidence. There are plenty of people sitting on death row without any real evidence at all.

 

[The Catboy]

Those are signs that he IS suffering from a mental disorder. He just has the bad kind of mental disorder that people hate you for, instead of the good one where people feel sorry for you.

Expect he would actually be remorseful. People with this disorder commonly show signs of depression and remorse, coupled with his rather public image. He was extremely outgoing and prideful, two features that are extremely rare for someone with this disorder.
Basically what I am getting at, is that he was a mostly mentally sound person who was obviously doing this for a sick thrill. He's very clearly not someone suffering from the actual mental illness. He's just a monster and his pride proves that

 

[The Catboy]

Those are signs that he IS suffering from a mental disorder. He just has the bad kind of mental disorder that people hate you for, instead of the good one where people feel sorry for you.
Which computer do you mean by "his computer", the only evidence I have seen so far was using that to describe the server he rented. Obviously it's impossible for anyone else to use a computer that you own. Malware is a lie, because only software that you authorise can be installed on a computer.

When emotions run high, like they do in these cases, then it would be very easy to get a court to convict for 20 years without much robust evidence. There are plenty of people sitting on death row without any real evidence at all.

I hate to double post, but you added more information and my last post wasn't very good. So first, he's clearly suffering from a mental disorder, but it's not the one everyone thinks it is. People who commonly suffer from the actual pedophile mental disorder are rarely public and in most cases will go out of their way to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. Something he wasn't doing. He signed all of his work with his real name and then released it to a mass audience, despite his criminal record. That is not a common trait of people suffering from this disorder. But this trait does show up in other mental disorders and most likely he is somewhere close to having "Antisocial personality disorder." Where he's doing this because he doesn't care about the children being violated and he even doesn't care about being arrested. He also didn't care that people could just look up his real name and find his court papers. None of these traits can be attributed to people with pedophile mental disorder, but they can link to ASPD.
Your second statement about it being on his rented server is completely false you can compiled that from this thread. Here's straight from his court record

During the hearing in the matter on November 7, 2014, at which both Edvalson and his counsel were present, a police detective, who was a certified forensic computer examiner, testified that 161 images of confirmed child pornography were found on Edvalson’s computer; that there was evidence that he had been online since November 26, 2012, the date of the bond; that two years prior to the date of the hearing, Edvalson hosted a discussion thread on which he set up child modeling

That's from his 2016 court files. In fact I can't even find anything claiming it was on his server beyond his fake "brother's" comments.

 

[Dylan the Tactician]

That's from his 2016 court files. In fact I can't even find anything claiming it was on his server beyond his fake "brother's" comments.

Not that it's my place, but since you've disproved that person on multiple occasions already perhaps removing those comments would help prevent the need to disprove them again? That person's false claims are cluttering the thread and distracting from what seemed to be the original intention: To inform members of a situation and explain the level of involvement GBAtemp had in that situation, which was none.

Again, I generally wouldn't intervene with something like this but the lies are clouding the truth from view and that's what's bothering me.

(On a separate note, I'd like to express appreciation to Crystal who's put in the effort to go through with at least some level of psycho-analysis to offer a plausible explanation as to the current situation, as well as giving us some of the details and evidence that she has access to. Lastly, it takes a certain level of patience to mediate a situation like this and I envy that you're able to deal with it because I know I couldn't )