On social media, a bullied teen found fame among child predators worldwide

The boy whose family was once known in this small town dotted with churches and surrounded by dairy farms for never missing a Sunday service was, by his early teens, isolated and suffering breakdowns.

“I stopped caring about everything,” Bradley Cadenhead later told probation officers. At 15, he dropped out of school and retreated to his room.

It was from his bedroom in a cramped apartment that the once God-fearing boy from Stephenville underwent an extraordinary transformation — from a lonely, isolated teenager into what authorities describe as a notorious predator of the social media age.

Sitting at his computer, Cadenhead harnessed the social media platform Discord to cultivate a domineering online persona, one that soon built a global following among sadists who prey on vulnerable children. Cadenhead and his followers, authorities say, convinced victims to share explicit images and then blackmailed them into harming themselves or committing degrading acts on video. The FBI has said the group, named “764” after the partial Zip code of Cadenhead’s hometown, meets the definition of domestic terrorism.

Today, at 19, Cadenhead is in his second year of an 80-year prison sentence — an unusually harsh punishment for a young offender but one that authorities say matches the gravity of his crimes.

“Very rarely do we get a chance to look evil in the face,” prosecutor Jett Smith told a judge at Cadenhead’s sentencing last year. “This may be one of those times.”

Cadenhead’s current attorney, Chris Perri, has said he is weighing an appeal of the sentence, citing “potential mental health issues,” but has declined to comment further.

To understand how a bullied teen in a small town in Texas was able to commit abuse on such a large scale — and how a social media company failed to stop him — The Washington Post interviewed friends, family members, classmates, school officials and congregants at his former church, and drew from hundreds of criminal and family court documents. The Post also obtained and examined thousands of messages sent from Cadenhead’s Discord accounts between early 2021 until his arrest in August that year.

The Post’s examination showed how Discord, which is popular with gamers, allowed a child shunned by peers in the real world to easily develop a following online by creating private spaces dedicated to his perverse interests and to attract both victims and like-minded predators from around the globe. It found that people close to Cadenhead, even as they tried to get him help, had no awareness of the dark virtual world he was constructing.

Cadenhead, meanwhile, easily evaded Discord’s safeguards. The platform relies largely on other users to flag abuse that occurs in private chatrooms. Each time he was kicked off the platform, Cadenhead created new accounts and resumed his activity, The Post found.

At times, he mocked the authorities for failing to act against him, and he taunted other users who tried to sound the alarm.

In April 2021, for instance, messages show that Cadenhead joined a chatroom called “No feds paradise” and along with two other users posted thousands of images that another user described as “gore and cp,” or child pornography.

“Ban him,” a user wrote, urging the fellow user who served as moderator of the chatroom to kick Cadenhead out. The moderator did not respond.

“Try harder,” Cadenhead replied, writing under his adopted screen name of “Felix,” while posting more images.

Chat logs reviewed by The Post show Cadenhead bragging that his “extortions are wild” and being lauded as a “god” for creating a “legendary group.” In one exchange, he pressured a 10-year-old girl to send nude pictures of herself. In another, he encouraged a user who had survived a suicide attempt to try again, even as a bystander warned of the potential repercussions.

A Discord spokeswoman said the company took action against Cadenhead’s accounts, shutting them down when it became aware of abusive or illegal activity. She said each of Cadenhead’s accounts was typically active for a day or less before the company took action.

“The actions of Bradley Cadenhead and 764 have no place on Discord or in society,” said the spokeswoman, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from 764-affiliated groups. “Since 2021, when Discord first became aware of these actors, disrupting this behavior and affiliated groups has been among our Safety team’s highest priorities.”

The Cadenhead case has unfolded amid a global debate over who should be held accountable for misconduct on digital platforms, and over how those platforms weigh safety considerations against profitability and user privacy. The group Cadenhead founded was also active on the messaging app Telegram, whose CEO was arrested in France last month on charges that his platform enabled the distribution of child sex abuse material and other illicit activities and refused to share information with criminal investigators. Details of the underlying criminal investigations have not been made public.

After its founder’s arrest, Telegram said that it abides by European laws, that its moderation is within industry standards and that it is “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” For a previous story about 764, Telegram told The Post that it removes “millions” of pieces of harmful content each day through “proactive monitoring of public parts of the platform and user reports.”

Cadenhead’s mother declined to comment for this story.

Jeff Cadenhead, his father, said in a statement to The Post that doctors and probation officers provided little help.

“Bradley was only 15 when he committed his crimes,” he said. “I don’t say that in an attempt to excuse it, but to point out that he was also a victim at some point. I pray that he will get the help he needs to heal from what was done to him, and that he will come to understand what he did to others. I also pray that his victims will find peace and healing, and won’t continue the cycle by victimizing others.”

At Cadenhead’s sentencing on possession of child pornography last year, Bobby Stidham, Erath County’s director of community supervision and corrections, told the judge that Cadenhead’s online persona was no less dangerous than a predator on the street.

“I don’t know if he knows where the internet ends and real life begins,” he said.

‘He wasn’t one to fight back’

When Cadenhead was young, his family stood out as particularly devoted.

“From the day Bradley was born, they never missed a day of church,” said Mike Halbert, who was Cadenhead’s Bible study teacher at Washington Street Baptist. “They fit right in and they seemed to live the life of being a Christian.”

His mother, Heather Schneider, told probation officers who wrote a presentencing report for the judge that he was “such a good child” and that she and he shared a tight bond. She said he was particularly close with one of his three half-siblings, a sister who “kind of took a parent role.”

But he was shy and withdrawn, and other children at his church began to bully him when he was about 6, Schneider said. She chose to leave the church around that time. Jeff Cadenhead insisted on continuing to take his son, causing tensions at home, she said, according to court records.

Schoolmates at Henderson Junior High School said they noticed a change, too. In fifth grade, Cadenhead began cursing in sudden outbursts, said Tyler Garrett, a classmate. “It was like he was always agitated about something.”

The behavior led to more bullying, schoolmates recalled.

“It was constant,” said Caleb Cantu, who had a locker next to Cadenhead in seventh grade. “People saw him as an easy target. He wasn’t one to fight back. He would just take it.”

In April 2018, when Cadenhead was in the seventh grade, his father found him on the floor in his room, curled up in the fetal position. He was crying and “babbling” and had shallow cuts on his arms, Jeff Cadenhead told The Post.

He said he called a mental health crisis hotline and was told they could get him an in-person evaluation in three months. Sensing the urgency, he said he took his son to an emergency room and then found a mental health facility in Wichita Falls, Tex., more than 100 miles away, one of several facilities that he said his son was admitted to and discharged from after brief stays in the ensuing years.

“The doctors at each place changed his meds and sent him home,” he said. “We tried every way we could to get help for him.”

Cantu, his classmate, said he began to realize something was wrong during an eighth-grade computer class. Cadenhead, he said, began to openly watch disturbing gore videos on classroom computers.

In the summer before ninth grade, she took primary custody of him, an arrangement both parents agreed to, records show. Cadenhead started at Stephenville High School as a freshman in August 2020, as school resumed in person for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. His parents told probation officers he began vomiting frequently due to anxiety and stopped going to school after about a week.

His father, a maintenance worker at an addiction recovery center in Stephenville, would stop by his ex-wife’s home in the morning on his way to work to try to persuade his son to go to school, Cadenhead’s paternal grandmother, Kay Glidewell, told The Post. But Cadenhead “never would answer the door,” she said.

Without the structure of school, Cadenhead spent overnight hours on his computer, his grandmother said. Cadenhead’s mother worked during the day, dispensing medication at a local retirement home, the grandmother said, and was permissive “when it came to any kind of supervision.”

In January 2021, Cadenhead officially dropped out, his mother later told probation officers. She told the officers she had received a call saying Cadenhead had to unenroll from school or she would face charges for truancy, court records show. The court records do not identify the caller or say if the person was a school employee.

In Texas, children are supposed to attend school until age 18. Texas law allows school districts to file a civil case against a student or parent after more than 10 absences in a six-month period. Cadenhead was 15 at the time.

Stephenville Superintendent Eric J. Cederstrom said in a statement that the district is “committed to adhering to the State of Texas expectations regarding student attendance” but said the district could not comment on Cadenhead’s mother’s account.

Cadenhead retreated to his room and became even more withdrawn, his mother told officers.

“The kid never left the house,” after dropping out, Stephenville Police Capt. Jeremy Lanier said. “His room and his bathroom were his entire existence.”

The same month he dropped out of school, Cadenhead started his first 764 chatroom, a Discord spokeswoman previously told The Post.

Building a following as a cult leader

Holed up in his room, Cadenhead began cultivating his new persona, messages reviewed by The Post show.

Using variations of the screen name “Felix,” he regularly dropped into various Discord chatrooms — called servers — and posted shocking images, urging interested users to join him in other spaces on the platform and bullying those who reacted with disgust. The private spaces he frequented were largely unmoderated by the company, which delegates most of that responsibility to the creators of those servers, including Cadenhead himself.

He claimed to have collected several terabytes of child pornography and once posted a video that a user said showed a sex act involving a baby. (The messages reviewed by The Post contained only the text portions of the exchanges.) “Felix” insisted in the online chats that he liked child pornography, and he reveled in his reputation for collecting it.

“im known for being a pedophile,” he wrote in an exchange on June 17.

“Felix the cp god,” another user responded, using the acronym for child pornography.

Some of Cadenhead’s comments appeared to be bluster. “Felix” claimed in the same chat that he had made $10,000 the previous day selling child pornography and in other conversations he claimed that he made as much as $25,000 a day — an assertion that Lanier, the Stephenville police captain, said was very unlikely.

“Felix” regularly engaged in online spats, threatening to send graphic child pornography to other users unless they chose to “submit” to him or “fold,” meaning to back down, the messages show. In one argument, he challenged another user to a physical altercation, posting an address in Stephenville where he claimed to live. The address was his next door neighbor’s.

He flaunted his ability to evade bans by Discord and other platforms, such as the gaming site Roblox, by creating hundreds of new accounts, many using variations of the name Felix followed by a string of numbers.

“im device banned from almost every email service,” he wrote on July 10 under the screen name Felix.#0744 in a server called “feds.” “ive been through 400 felix accounts, 100 fake accounts (for discord) banned on roblox twice.”

And he bragged that law enforcement would not — or could not — stop him.

“ive already been reported to the fbi 15 times and they havent done sh**,” Felix.#6638 wrote to another user who threatened to report him to police for posting child pornography on June 17.

The company said after publication that it sent 58 reports to law enforcement about Cadenhead’s accounts before his arrest.

On June 27, another user posted in a server called “Crime” that sharing such images was a serious risk that could result in a lengthy prison sentence.

“lol, 764 without cp and gore is pointless,” “Felix” responded.

‘We would be 764 gods if brad was here’

Cadenhead’s behavior soon caught up with him.

Three days after the user warned him about the potential for prison, Stephenville police received one of 58 separate reports showing that child pornography had been uploaded by a Discord user accessing the internet somewhere in town, court records show. The reports were submitted through a national tip line that the public or social media companies can use to flag online child exploitation. Authorities traced the images back to Cadenhead’s mother’s two-bedroom apartment.

When police showed up with a search warrant on the afternoon of Aug. 25, 2021, Lanier said, Cadenhead emerged from the apartment, his hair disheveled. Inside his room, which Lanier said reeked of body odor, they found a laptop that police later determined contained 20 images of prepubescent girls engaged in sex acts.

They also found images of children who had carved “I heart CP764” and “Brad is a pedo” into their bodies, “multiple recorded videos” of users being “groomed” and a video of an adult male smoking heroin in honor of “Brad 764,” according to court records.

In March 2023, Cadenhead pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography, without any agreement in place as to what prison sentence he might receive.

At his sentencing two months later, his behavioral health therapist told the judge that Cadenhead needed treatment, medication and supervision, not jail time, according to a transcript of the hearing.

“When looking at this case, there’s no way to minimize the seriousness of the actions Bradley took,” said his lawyer at the time, Lukas A. Lawrence. “But … to condemn him for the rest of his life for something he did when he was 15, it just goes beyond what this crime seems to demand.”

But Stidham, Erath County’s director of community supervision and corrections, told the judge he wasn’t sure Cadenhead could be trusted.

“He spends many hours on the internet every day, in this fantasy world. … He apparently is very, potentially, very charismatic. He convinced these people to carve names on their skin.”

Erath County District Judge Jason Cashon reviewed the disturbing images and videos from Cadenhead’s computer privately in his chambers. Back on the bench, he listed each of the Bible’s seven deadly sins by name and said there was “evidence” of them in this case.

“There is something horribly wrong with you,” Cashon told Cadenhead. “Horribly.”