CHICAGO (WGN) — Court filings show a call to police from concerned witnesses led to investigators discovering hundreds of photos and videos showing children being sexually assaulted.
David Rideout, 50, a convicted sex offender, was taken into custody on Sept. 15 at the Bucktown-Wicker Park Chicago Public Library branch. He remains behind bars after a judge denied his pretrial release.
“This possession continuously victimizes these specific [victims] and perpetuates the market for the production of this material. This is extremely dangerous,” wrote Circuit Judge John Hock in the pretrial detention order.
According to a charging document, a visitor alerted security that she saw someone inside the reading room with an inappropriate image on their tablet. The security guard went to the room and saw an unattended tablet with an image on the home screen showing a young girl restrained and wearing no clothes.
The worker, who made the call to police, told investigators she covered the tablet and watched through a window as Rideout returned. According to a proffer, staff recognized the suspect as a regular patron at the library and said he sits in the same spot every other day.
An arrest report stated as Chicago police officers responded to the library, they saw the same image described by witnesses and took the suspect into custody.
A search warrant for the tablet was executed and allegedly revealed 256 images and 112 videos of child sexual assault material. According to the Cook County States Attorney’s Office, the first 20 videos and 20 photographs it reviewed depicted several young children, including boys and girls.
Prosecutors allege Rideout gave detectives the code to the tablet and said was given to him at a center where he would shower and wash his clothes back in 2023. Rideout told detectives the tablet was blank when he received it and that he goes to the library at 1701 North Milwaukee Avenue every other day.
Rideout faces several charges, including possession of child pornography. He had an active warrant out of Kane County for failure to register, court records show.
Prosecutors allege Rideout told investigators he knows he is supposed to register as a sex offender but claimed “he had never registered because the police get grumpy when he approaches them.”
His most recent known address was a homeless shelter in the 1700 block of N. Ashland Avenue in the city’s Bucktown neighborhood, an arrest report shows.
According to the state’s sex offender registry, Rideout, who is classified as a sexual predator, was convicted of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in 2012. Court filings from Cook and Sangamon counties reveal Rideout, who was 36 at the time, inappropriately touched a 6-year-old boy.
Rideout took a plea deal and was sentenced to three years in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), with credit for time served, and a subsequent two years of mandatory supervised release, court records show. In 2016, he was found guilty of failing to register as a sex offender and sentenced to two years in IDOC.
Rideout is due back in court on Oct. 7 for a status hearing.
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