Gay man who bought baby via surrogate is a child sex offender in Pennsylvania

( Post Millennial )

A man depicted in a video showcasing the gay couple’s surrogacy journey has been revealed to be a registered child sex offender. Logan Riley and Brandon Mitchell were seen in a video holding their baby, celebrating the child’s first months of life.

The video initially went viral on social media after Irish right-wing activist and political figure Derek Blighe posted it to X, when the identities of the couple were not publicly known. Blighe wrote at the time, "Unless a miracle happens, this child has almost no chance at a normal life," which was met with criticism.

Just a day later, Anna Slatz for Reduxx revealed that one of the men in the video, Brandon Keith Mitchell, is a Tier 1 sex offender in Pennsylvania. In 2016, Mitchell was arrested after attempting to solicit a 16-year-old boy, who was a student at Downingtown West High School, for sexual abuse. Mitchell, then 30, worked at the school as a chemistry teacher.

Authorities said that Mitchell had asked the boy to send him nude pictures and told the victim that he wanted to watch him masturbate. Mitchell sent the victim 20 nude photos of himself.

A search warrant executed on Mitchell’s electronic devices and phone records revealed that he had exchanged over 12,000 text messages with the victim between May 2013 and December 2014. Mitchell had told the boy to delete their messages. Hundreds of other sexually explicit videos of the boy were found by police on Mitchell’s computer.

Mitchell pleaded guilty to felony child pornography possession and one count of Corruption of Minors. He was sentenced to up to 23 months in prison but was released on parole just two months after being convicted.

Under the conditions of his parole, Mitchell was ordered to have no unsupervised contact with minors, and that he give up his teaching license. For the past nine years, Mitchell has worked as a chemist at Lancaster’s Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing. Mitchell married Logan Riley in 2021. Riley is a second-grade teacher from Maryland who moved to Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania.

The couple launched a GoFundMe in 2023 to help raise money for surrogacy. "Dear Family and Friends, Brandon (my fiancé) and I are looking to expand our family by using a gestational surrogate. In gestational surrogacy, the child is not biologically related to the surrogate mother. Instead, an embryo is created via in vitro fertilization (IVF) using an anonymous donor egg. The embryo is then transferred to the gestational surrogate who carries the baby as if it were any other pregnancy. Once the baby is born, the intended parents (Brandon and I) would have full legal custody," the fundraiser stated.

A November 2023 update revealed that the couple had found a surrogate. "Our surrogate went through extensive medical and social worker evaluations in order to be approved for surrogacy. Once approved, the lengthy legal and financial process began. We are so excited that our amazing surrogate will carry one of our embryos for us, helping to expand our family," an update stated, finishing with the line, "Future Fathers, Logan and Brandon."

The fundraiser had a goal of $50,000 but received just $2,000.

When reached by Reduxx, the Pennsylvania State Police division responsible for maintaining Mitchell’s registration said that the state does not "automatically forbid individuals convicted of sex crimes from having children, gaining custody, or exercising parental rights," Reduxx reported. Adoption laws in the state prohibit six offenders from adopting or fostering children. However, through obtaining a pre-birth order that lists the intended parents as the legal parents, surrogacy circumvents these laws.