Three Florida residents pleaded guilty Friday to threatening and intimidating employees of pregnancy resource centers, according to officials.
The centers have the free exercise of the right to provide and seek to provide reproductive health services.
The defendants selected reproductive health facilities that provided and counseled abortion alternatives and vandalized those facilities with threatening messages.
According to court documents, between May and July 2022, Caleb Freestone, Amber Smith-Stewart, and Annarella Rivera engaged in a series of targeted attacks on pro-life pregnancy help centers in Florida.
The defendants admitted they participated in the attack in the dark of night and, while wearing masks and dark clothing to obscure their identities, spray painted the facilities with threatening messages, including “If abortions aren’t safe than niether [sic] are you,” “YOUR TIME IS UP!!,” “WE’RE COMING for U” and “We are everywhere.”
“The FBI works diligently to safeguard the civil rights of our citizens,” said Acting Special Agent in Charge Rodney Crawford of the FBI Tampa Field Office. “We and our law enforcement partners will not tolerate those who conspire to attack facilities providing these lawful reproductive health services.”
A sentencing hearing will be scheduled at a later date. The defendants each face up to 10 years in prison, officials stated.
(A year ago, a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Heidi Matzke, Executive Director of the Alternatives Pregnancy Center, detailed threats to her crisis pregnancy center.)
Charges remain pending against a fourth defendant.
The FBI Tampa Field Office investigated the case.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Stacie Harris for the Middle District of Florida and Trial Attorney Laura-Kate Bernstein of the Civil Rights Division’s Criminal Section are prosecuting the case.