You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Child Porn Perp.
Friday I walked down a 69-year-old man outside the Federal Court House.
I don’t know if he is the oldest walk down of my career, but it might have been the saddest.
The story is bizarre to be sure.
In 2008; Federal agents swoop into the Vanderbilt University offices of this sociology professor and arrest him. They find hundred of images of child porn on his computer.
A FBI agent tells me, the professor tries to say he is doing research.
Research? for what? The guy’s a perp. He has a problem. This is the most vile form of crime there is.
Arresting child porn suspects and sending them to prison is too mild a sentence. To me it’s like catching bacterial coated cock roaches and putting them in protected boxes coated with soft cotton and thimbles of pinot noir?
You wouldn’t do this, would you?
NO.
You’d drop your heel onto their tiny exoskeleton and crush their spines.
But unlike cockroaches, porn suspects are afforded rights and so we put them through the process and judicially coddle them in a system that is overwhelmed.
In 2010; The senior citizen pleads guilty to possession of child porn.
In 2012; A federal Judge sentences him in connection with this disgusting crime.
Normally child porn yields 60 months in prison. End of story. Jail door slams shut. Inmates learn you are a child porn perp and natural selection takes place.
But in this case, the federal judge does something very odd.
He sentences the perp-professor to 36 months of teaching inmates behind bars in prison.
That’s a lot different than 60 months of hard time in general population, where fellow inmates will torment you like the little children who were tormented to bring you the images you down loaded.
No this judge sentences the professor to 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week teaching others.
Huh?
I work 1o hours a day 5 days a week, and I don’t even have a J walking ticket.
This child porn suspect has it easier than most of us working stiffs?
The judge feels his skill set is unique and teaching hardened young men would be the best use of the old man’s time.
The only problem? The judge never checked with the Bureau of Prisons which can’t accommodate the judge’s wishes.
So 5 years after the arrest, 3 years after his conviction, 1 year after his original sentence, all parties are back in court to decide a worthwhile sentence for this child porn perp.
Does the punishment fit the crime?
The prosecution says incarcerate him for at least 13 months. The United States feels he must serve some time behind bars.
The defense says he is a rare sexual offender, talented, brilliant, reformed. He is not a predator. He has shown an ability to be reformed. The defense says put the man’s considerable attributes to work for free.
The Judge is trying to find a happy medium.
But it is a quagmire.
I’m in a cathedral-like federal court room. Dark wood walls and clean lines. The seats are new, the smooth leather shiny clean. The authority of the Federal System is overwhelming.
I have only been in Federal Court a few times. It is quite a contrast from state and city court. By comparison, these facilities are run down and worn out by a constant drudgery of endless violations. Judges are tired. Prosecutors are weary. The court is a flesh sewer moving paper and trying to deal with lives that have gone so far off course that there is no hope.
I mull this over while seated in this massive edifice of judicial authority. There are few people here. There are 2 court officers and FBI agent and assistant US district attorney and a defense attorney.There is the old man fighting his case and perhaps a dozen of his friends and family.
Still the room is empty.
I am astounded that this process is taking so long.
In Saudi Arabia, this man’s penis would have all ready been severed in Chop Chop square.
Date Night in Riyadh, don’t you know?
After a 30 minute Federal hearing, the merry go round of justice stops. Like it’s lower court, the arguments are just as repetitive and lackluster. Just like the city court, the wheel stops right where it started and the judge postpones the decision another 30 days.
What a waste of tax payer money, I think to myself.
I leave the court scratching my head wondering how anything in the judicial system actually gets done.
I run downstairs and meet my camera man.
there are multiple exits to the court house, but thanks to terrorism, we are standing at the only doors that people use.
After 5 minutes the old man and his group exit into the day light.
I approach the nearly 70 year old man.
I am aware of his age and his former station in life.
But I am also aware, as an FBI agent so boldly reminds me, “He’s in this position because of what he did.”
“Sir. Can we get a comment from you?” I ask.
The man smiles but says nothing.
I’m not about to give up so easily.
I’ve easily walked down a hundred suspects in my life.
I can’t lie to you. It’s a rush. It’s an adrenaline charge. It’s challenging. It’s an unpredictable stroll where fights can erupt, spit can fly, admissions of guilt can be spewed.
“Sir. Don’t you think you should go to prison just like anyone else who is convicted of this crime?”
He smiles and walks forward.
“Don’t you have anything to say in your behalf sir?”
“I wish I could. God bless you,” he says.
If he wasn’t convicted of child porn, you’d think this kind avuncular man was another elder to be cherished.
I walk with him. This is our first opportunity to get a picture of this man. He was never arrested on the state level so we never got a mug shot from the police. The feds don’t do mug shots. Cameras aren’t allowed inside the courts.
This is the moment. We are going to milk it, walk him down. We have to.
I am polite, but persistent, like a tiny gnat that doesn’t bite, but is bothersome.
Suddenly I see one of his group, an old man in his late 60’s. He had been right behind the porn suspect, smiling, listening. Without warning, like an angry bull, he rushes forward.
He pushes between me and the suspect in mid stride. He bangs into my microphone. Suddenly his face fills up the camera’s viewfinder.
“Do you want to say something sir?” I ask in the confusion of a backward interview on a narrow sidewalk.
Like fire works that rush out of the canister, explode in the sky, then fall back to Earth dissipating, the man says nothing, quietly fading into the background.
We continue our walk down.
It’s sad. It’s invigorating. It’s a spectacle.
After a minute, we stop.
The man and his family climb into cars and drive away.
I look at my camera man.
“That was nuts. That’s the oldest guy I think I ever walked down.”
“We had to do it,” he says with the grizzled sense of a news man.
“I tried to be polite,” I say.
“You were very respectful,” he says.
I feel a moment of sadness, questioning my actions.
Should I have been more respectful of the old man, the life long educator, a man the judge thinks is unique, qualified for special sentencing?
Then I think about the disgusting filth on the old man’s computer. I think about the sick mind that looks at this, craves this, desires this. I think about the old man in his lofty offices at Vanderbilt University with hundreds of images and 13 videos of child porn.
I think about the FBI Agent’s statement to me “He has no one to blame but himself for being here.”
I think about my camera man’s statement to me “It’s our job to inform the public. This is news.”
I suddenly realize that I am not the one who should be remorseful for my actions.
His defense attorney will tell me that this is one of the most minor incidents of child porn he has worked.
Only a couple of hundred images of naked children.
Wow! Is that the criteria now. 213 images is a minor child porn charge? 213 images of babies being exploited, hurt, defiled, is a yawner in the judicial system.
I think about the disgusting animal that takes one picture of one child anywhere in the world and then disseminates it into the ether. I think about the sewer snipes who sit in front of their computers in the dark, breathing heavily, downloading the image of that poor child who suffered an unspeakable act. I think about the filing sharing of these disturbed twisted mutants who get off on this one image. I think about how the destructive act to this one child is incalculable.
And defense attorneys argue that compared to other rodent filth they defend, the professor is a shining light of child porn defendants.
Wow.
Calling this man a shining light is disingenous. He is a Herpes sore on society. He deserves to be punished for a despicable act that harms an unspecified child somewhere in the world.
You see, if there was no demand for these horrific images, there would be no desecration, no production, no dissemination.
I think about all this in the blink of an eye.
I’m glad I walked the old porn suspect. I’m glad I was polite but glad I was persistent. My job is to inform and illuminate.
Kill the messenger? Screw it. Kill the guy who produces child porn.
My job is to let people question whether a man who only had 213 images of babies being sexually violated is a shining light who should get special attention from the court. What is he? A porn celebrity?
I look up at the big Federal Courthouse. The sun is setting and reflecting in a dozen shimmering black windows.
The building represents truth and justice.
But somehow the American way is lost. It’s lost in this court house and it’s lost inside the twisted mind of a promising professor who deserves to be sentenced harshly and swiftly.
His victims would have it no other way.
Life’s Crazy™