Son of former Edmonton councillor accused of accessing child sexual abuse materials

Rocco Caterina, a former Edmonton city council candidate and son of former councillor Tony Caterina, has been charged with accessing child sexual exploitation m

The son of a former Edmonton councillor has been accused of accessing child sexual abuse materials on the dark web.

Rocco Caterina, 40, was arrested at his Stony Plain, Alta., home on May 27 in connection with a global child sexual exploitation investigation led by the Norwegian National Criminal Investigation Service (NCIS).

He was one of 28 arrested in 14 countries.

The accused allegedly obtained the material by purchasing dark web forum access with cryptocurrency.

“These sites aren’t simply going to accept a credit card,” said Alison Church, Staff Sgt. in charge of the Northern Alberta Internet Child Exploitation Unit (ICE) at a press conference Wednesday. “Cryptocurrency would allow some distance from you and that payment you’ve made.”

Caterina was charged with possessing child sexual abuse and exploitation materials.

He was released and is scheduled to appear in court on July 15.

NCIS began its investigation in late 2024 into the dark web forum Alice in Wonderland which was dedicated to the sexual exploitation of girls aged newborn to 17. The forum was active for about five years.

Church said most of the cases her office investigates involve the most egregious material and prioritizes incidents involving very young children including babies and toddlers.

“The sheer amount of reports that come into our office require that we triage those reports, and when you are doing a triage, that means that you are looking at the worst of the worst,” said Church. “I think we can all agree that the newborn stage would be the worst of the worst.”

Church said ICE will be working with NCIS going forward on how to best execute investigations of such nature.

“It is in our interest to get into the meat and potatoes of the investigation,” said Church. “If they have a method that they’ve used in regards to cryptocurrency and identifying users on those dark web forums, we will use that … I think that’s the next step that our unit needs to take.”

Caterina is the son of Tony Caterina, who sat on Edmonton city council from 2007 to 2021 and ran for mayor in 2025. That same year, Rocco was the runner-up for the Ward 4 council seat.

The other suspects were arrested in Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czechia, Germany, Denmark, the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania and Sweden.