SPRINGFIELD — A federal judge has ruled a 24-year-old West Springfield man must remain behind bars in a case tied to a sadistic online group that preys on children.
While his defense attorney argued in a hearing earlier this month that Ryan Stenwick is a mild-mannered grocery store employee who can do no harm if not permitted a computer, U.S. Magistrate Judge Katherine Robertson disagreed.
“He has demonstrated a capacity for manipulating and coercing a vulnerable victim and taking pleasure in her degradation,” Robertson wrote in her opinion released earlier this month, referring to allegations that Stenwick in 2022 urged one young woman to carve his initials into her leg and then sexually humiliate herself.
