Copyright 2017, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.
By Michael Gougis
Federal prosecutors have accused Kenneth Bigler, a club-level road racer and longtime member of the Southern California mini road racing community, of traveling internationally with the intention of having sex with children as young as eight years old, court documents show. The story was broken by The Los Angeles Times and appeared on the newspaper’s website earlier this week.
Bigler, of Walnut, California, traveled to Mexico with the intent of having paid sexual encounters with boys and girls on at least five occasions between November 2013 and December 2015, according to the complaint filed by an Federal Bureau of Investigation agent assigned to the agency’s Violent Crimes division in San Diego.
Bigler exchanged multiple e-mails with a man in Tijuana during this period to arrange for sexual encounters with children, according to the complaint, which quotes extensively from the e-mails that were provided to the FBI by the Tijuana resident. Federal agents obtained a search warrant for Bigler’s e-mail account, but found no corresponding e-mails there, suggesting that Bigler deleted e-mails after sending them, the agent states.
In the e-mails provided by the Tijuana resident, Bigler details the types of encounters he wants, the age of the children to be involved, how much he is willing to pay for the encounters, and describes specific details of the encounters that he has had in in the past in Mexico, according to the complaint.
In addition, Bigler describes having sexual encounters with children as young as 10 in Thailand in the e-mails sent to the Tijuana resident, the document states.
U.S. Customs and Border Control records show that Bigler crossed the border into Mexico on or around the times of the e-mail exchanges with the Tijuana resident, and also show that Bigler was in Thailand at the time of the e-mails describing his sexual encounters with children there, the complaint states. In one instance, Bigler states that he has to delay further encounters with the children due to an upcoming dirt bike ride to Loreto in Mexico with a friend, the document states.
Bigler is charged in U.S. District Court, Southern District of California, with five counts of violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 2423(b), travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, according to the indictment issued August 25 by a federal grand jury. Details of the allegations were included in a sealed complaint filed by the special agent on August 11 and unsealed by the court at the time of the indictment. Bigler was arrested and remains in custody, a court spokesperson said.
Records show that Bigler raced with the now-defunct WSMC (Willow Springs Motorcycle Club) and with WERA on a literbike in 2009-2010, and raced mini motorcycles with SCminiGP from at least 2006 on. In addition, social media posts show that Bigler was working with young road racers from Southern California through the summer of 2017.
Former road racer (and the father of a road racer) Eric DeHaven said, “I am glad Roadracing World and others are covering this. This guy was in the paddock and around our children for years. It is important to get the word out to anyone who might have been impacted by this.”
Another former road racer (and another father of a road racer) Rob Linders said, “I wanted to thank you for publishing this article. Everyone who has come into contact with him needs to know of these serious charges. We’ve been racing motorcycles around him since 2007 and the quicker this information is out the better.”
See the Los Angeles Times report here: