Rick Rood: Teacher, Speaker and Distributor of Child Modeling Photos
With over 90 child models as young as 6, an estimated 35,000 photos, and CDs of "raw footage" from children's swimsuit shoots, elementary educator and youth-development speaker Rick Rood has lived a double life as "Aquaria" for more than 25 years.
With over 90 child models as young as 6, an estimated 35,000 photos, and CDs of "raw footage" from children's swimsuit shoots, elementary educator and youth-development speaker Rick Rood has lived a double life as "Aquaria" for more than 25 years.
I'd recommend reading my original piece first, but for a quick TLDR – The Beautiful Youth Project was a website that exhibited and sold photos of over 90 child models between 2001 and May of 2026 organized and run by a California based photographer and educator named Rick Rood who goes by the alias "Aquaria".
I'll be honest, I made a mistake. I gave Rick the benefit of the doubt in my last piece. While continuing research on pedophile ecosystems, I came across the smoking gun that got me digging much deeper into Mr. Rood's past, and why it matters for it to come to light.
The smoking gun was this post, under the same username Aquaria. Here he is advertising a child's swim suit photo shoot on DVD specifically to pedophiles. Here he is confirming he knows the sites purpose.
So lets go back to the true beginning of this whole mess, but to get it out of the way, if you'd like proof that Aquaria is Rick Rood, use this drop down.
▸ How we know "Aquaria" is Rick Rood: 11 independent links
A. His own pages
beforethebellrings.beautifulyouth.com is credited "by aquaria" and the footer reads "Copyright 2013 Rick Rood."
RickRood.PlugUsIn4Cash.com on beautifulyouth.com itself.
aquaria subdomain is his day job.
aquaria.beautifulyouth.com serves After School Answers: bio of "Rick Rood," and workshop booking at supersaas.com/schedule/RickRood/Workshops.
kidsportlife.beautifulyouth.com publishes under the author slug aquaria, and its 2015 posts are signed rickrood.
B. Account records
myspace.com/aquaria13 is titled "Rick Rood." Same email as the Evite record above.
aquaria (500px, "Rick Rood, USA"), aquaria13 and aq13. A second account with an "aq" handle shares a password with it that appears on only four email addresses in the breach index.
C. Domains and hosting
rickrood.com, youthmodel.com (2001-03-06, one day after beautifulyouth.com was created), afterschoolanswers.com, beforethebellrings.com, kidsportlife.com, jrleader.com and two others. Each of those brands is also a subdomain of beautifulyouth.com.
rickrood., aprilrood. and rickroodart.beautifulyouth.com on the same certificate as the photo site.
beautifulyouth.com and rickrood.com resolve to the same IP, 144.208.71.129. The student-blog subdomain jrleader sits in the same cPanel account (/home/beauti59/).
D. Others name him
Any one of these could be a coincidence. All eleven point to the same person, and they come from three unrelated kinds of source: his own pages, breach databases, DNS/WHOIS records, and a third-party credit.
In 1999 Beautifulyouth started "Privately" in California. By 2001 Rick would open the first BeautifulYouth website, aq13.com. It's flagship site sold 2 main galleries ("Mediteraneo" with a child named Nico, and "Four Girls") with 17 archived galleries you could also pay for.
The notice at the bottom of that page tells visitors not to repost the images "anywhere except alt.binaries.pictures.children." That's an address on Usenet, an older, pre-web part of the internet built around topic-based discussion boards called newsgroups, where anyone could post and download files. In contrast, a banned usenet group was called alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.children. Alt.binaries.pictures.children was advertised by fellow pedophiles as the soft core group where kids are clothed.
Rick was also not shy in his motivations for the site, stating:
"The BeautifulYouth Project was designed differently from the start than other, 'similar' sites on the web. It was a response to other sites that I saw that exploited young models, pandering suggestive photos in return for huge profits. My original inspiration came from the site 'Lil' Amber', which was really the flagship site for the WebeWeb Corp. I was struck by the way that photos were deliberately posed in a suggestive manner... - Rick Rood (01-01-2007)
For those unaware, Webe Web Corporation was a Florida-based company that operated a network of child modeling subscription sites, childsupermodels.com being the flagship, featuring girls ages 7-16 in swimwear and revealing clothing. Rick was a big fan of the website. In fact, he was such a fan that he would advertise them on his website. Asking for votes for his BeautifulYouth Project to show up in the top 100 child supermodels website.
In November 2006, a federal indictment was unsealed against Webe Web Corp and its two principals, president Marc Evan Greenberg and vice president Jeffrey Libman. It charged them with conspiring to produce child pornography under the cover of a child-modeling business. Alabama photographer Jeff Pierson was charged separately with conspiring to transport child pornography, and he pleaded guilty in January 2007. In April 2010 Webe Web Corp. pleaded guilty to conspiracy to produce child pornography and sixteen counts of transporting it, and Greenberg pleaded guilty to money laundering connected to the case. Libman pleaded guilty in September 2010 to sixteen counts of transporting child pornography and was sentenced to nine years. Prosecutors said the images were "not legitimate child modeling, but rather lascivious poses one would expect to see in an adult magazine." Rood published his Webe Web "inspiration" quote on January 1, 2007, about five weeks after the indictment was unsealed.
Originally only available through mail-order CD or direct download in 2001, it included hundred of photos of children sometimes in little clothing for around $20 (around $40 today). To sweeten the deal he always made sure to add "raw footage" of different shoots, including a swimsuit shoot with an 11 year old.
Rick would also start selling a monthly subscription service in 2002. It started as $20 for the first month and $14 a month after that, which in 2026 translates to about $40 and $25 respectively.
The patrons area would evolve over time, offering exclusive CDs sold at patron-only prices (a $25 CD for $20, a $40 "Jake By The Bay" disc for $20) and, later, limited-edition "trading card" shoots, where each photo could be bought only five times before it was "retired.". Creating exclusivity makes people feel like they have something special. In 2007 he advertised "More than 200 new photo artworks each month in high resolution". You could even get prints autographed by the child and Rick.
In late 2003 Yahoo removed his BeautifulYouth group on the infamous yahoo groups and by 2004 PayPal froze Ricks assets and forced him to a new payment processor all together.
Rick also decided to also release an album that, in english, is titled "boy girl", although it's not clear if he made any money off this venture.
By 2002, Rick was running both aq13 and beautifulyouth.com. But he was also running a different website called Youthbeach that strayed into some new territory for Rick. Stating on the home page "We gladly try our youths as adults in courts of law, yet refuse them basic rights of citizenship such as the right to vote or the right to their own sexuality."
Unfortunately we don't know a ton about YouthBeach, but it seems to be Ricks half child modeling site half youth rights website. Rick even linked to a now defunct forum for "Youth rights". Almost none of the site survived the test of time except this homepage and a defunct gallery with a quote by Judith Levine from the book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, a 2002 book arguing that U.S. efforts to shield children from sex do them more harm than good, which is one of the books cited often by admitted pedophiles on the various forums I have investigated.
In mid 2002 he had added a note to the site's About page saying BeautifulYouth 'does not, nor will it ever, support the abuse and exploitation of children,' and asking "anyone seeking sexual material to leave.". He added disclaimers to the homepage in bright yellow text. He also claims to have the models parental consent on file. In 2004 this page went up.
Although vocally against the exploitation of children, he has also made some alarming statements. First an incident where he found out 2 child models who were a part of BeautifulYouth were now seemingly making some sort of child exploitation material for money on another site. Rick responded:
It seems his argument here is that although the photos of the child models are sensual, since it's not the main focus then his material shouldn't be considered inappropriate. In another instance he reminisces about a beach photo shoot with a 9 year old.
Whether Rick has an affinity for children isn't something I can comment on. But the evidence shows at least 2 decades of advertising his photo's of children directly to pedophiles. Now, after I released my original piece back in late May, the site stayed functioning until Mid August when Rick started scrubbing everything other than his personal domains.
As of the release of this piece, Rick's personal website still is hosted on rickrood.beautifulyouth.com. He has also begun deleting all of his social media, although if these pieces are why is not known. His current job as a speaker gives him access to schools all over the country, and he has also trained and worked with at least 3 other photographers since 2006.
To me, child modeling is an oxymoron much like child pageantry and honestly has no place in today's society. Selling photos of children in bathing suits is something that's indefensible, legal or not. Parent's consent also doesn't equal harm reduction, These kids can't take their pictures back off the internet, but the removal of BeautifulYouth from the internet is a good start.
This piece is based entirely on publicly available information. Quotations are reproduced exactly as they appeared in those sources, and screenshots are included so readers can check them. Images of children have been blurred or left out, and no explicit material is shown or linked. This article does not accuse Rick Rood of a crime, and nothing here should be read as saying he committed one. It documents what he published, sold, advertised and said, and where, as shown by the public record. Conclusions beyond that are the reader's own. If you believe anything here is inaccurate, contact me with the source and I will review and correct it at [email protected]