Ken Schaefer was a prisoner at FCI Loretto whom John Kiriakou describes as the most dangerous adversary he made inside — and the occasion for what Kiriakou calls his own descent into darkness during his sentence.[1][2]
The case
Schaefer had abused a boy over a period of six years, beginning when the boy was 12. In Kiriakou’s account, the child was told he should sue — the family had money — and found a lawyer willing to take the case on contingency. When the civil suit was filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the court clerk asked why it was a civil matter and not a criminal one, and telephoned the FBI.[3][4]
Schaefer’s parents posted bail, which Kiriakou puts at around $250,000. He went straight to Israel, which Kiriakou says does not extradite Jews regardless of the accusation, and lived there on money sent by his parents.[4]
The ballet extravaganza
The FBI’s solution, in Kiriakou’s telling, was an advertisement. They took out notices in the English-language Israeli newspapers announcing a once-in-a-lifetime, one-night-only ballet extravaganza in Cyprus featuring the greatest child ballet dancers in the world.[5]
Kiriakou says Schaefer was arrogant enough to buy a ticket, assuming he could slip into Cyprus for a few hours and fly out again. There was no ballet extravaganza. Interpol was waiting in force at the airport, and he was extradited from Cyprus to the United States and denied bail.[6]
He was charged with two counts under the Mann Act — transporting a person across state lines for the purpose of illicit sex — and one count of what Kiriakou describes as pederasty. One Mann Act count was thrown out; he was convicted on the other two and sentenced to 20 years.[7]
The boy’s attorney was also the target of an attempt to make the case disappear, described at the astrophotographer lawyer.
At Loretto
Schaefer told other prisoners he was inside for mergers and acquisitions irregularities. Kiriakou confronted him, pointing out that every detail of a case is available to anybody who types a name into the law library computer, and told him he was not rooming with him — he needed to room with the other pedophiles and eat at the rat and pedophile table.[8]
Schaefer took it as a direct challenge and began spreading rumours. Kiriakou says he underestimated how well liked Kiriakou was: two Black prisoners whose appeals or letters Kiriakou had written came to warn him that Schaefer had offered them money to hurt him, and a Mexican prisoner from the Barrios whose appeal Kiriakou had written reported an offer of $500, made with the claim that Kiriakou hated Jews and was antisemitic.[1][9][10][11]
Kiriakou concluded he would have to be proactive — to get Schaefer before Schaefer got him — and decided to try a light touch first, on the reasoning that frightening the man into backing off would count as a victory without going to the nuclear option.[11]
The end of it
The outcome was a fight that removed three men at once. Guards seized Schaefer along with two others — a prisoner Kiriakou calls Art and Dave Phillips — and put all three in solitary confinement for about six weeks. Art was sent to a prison in Illinois, Phillips to Ohio and Schaefer to New Jersey, breaking up the group.[12]
Kiriakou was again called to the lieutenant’s office and again told that the only reason he was not on the bus was that the cameras had not caught him going up to the pedophile unit. He denied everything. His summary is that they knew they could not touch him, that it got rid of Schaefer, and that it made the rest of his time at Loretto much easier.[13]