LGBTQ+ journalist is fugitive sex offender, police claim

A fugitive child-sex offender said to have worked as a journalist in LGBTQ+ media under a pseudonym has been arrested by police in California.

It is alleged by police that George Paul Bishop, 66, had been living and working under the name Brody Levesque, in Santa Cruz County, south of San Francisco, for a number of years.

The alias matches online profiles of a journalist who has bylines in various LGBTQ+ titles, including Los Angeles Blade, Washington Blade, Gay Star News and PinkNews, The Advocate reports.

In 2005, The Connection reported that Bishop was sentenced to three years in jail and 12 years’ probation for two counts of manufacturing child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography. He admitted the offences.

The boy involved was said to be 16 years and was filmed wearing only bondage gear at the home of a co-defendant.

According to Virginia State Police records, Bishop was required to register as a tier three sex offender for life in 2016 but failed to do so, which led to him being classified as a fugitive. He had been on the run ever since. A warrant for Bishop’s arrest has been active since June of that year, The Advocate reported.

California’s Capitola Police Department issued a press release last week, revealing that Bishop had been taken into custody on a “fully extraditable federal warrant stemming from failing to register as a violent child-sex offender”.

The authorities believe Bishop had been living in Capitola for the past two years, using the fake name.

Speaking to The Advocate, police captain Leo Moreno, the department’s LGBTQ+ liaison officer, said Bishop and Levesque were one and the same person who “identified himself as press”.

A Muck Rack profile for Levesque describes him as “veteran journalist and editor-in-chief of Rated LGBTQ and the executive producer of Rated LGBTQ Radio” who formerly served as editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Blade and Washington bureau chief for LGBTQ Nation”.

Lynne Brown, the co-founder and owner of Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, which owns the Los Angeles Blade and Washington Blade said Bishop had worked as a freelancer and later became editor of the LA title. However, he was let go last year for “overreaching and exaggerating his titles”.

Scott Gatz, the founder and chief executive of Q.Digital, which is LGBTQ Nation’s parent company, said: “This individual has never worked for Q.Digital but his byline appears in the [Nation’s] archives which we acquired in 2015.”

PinkNews published four pieces written by Levesque between 2011 and 2012. He was never employed by the title and never paid for content he produced.

The authorities are investigating whether Bishop committed any crime while living under his assumed identity.