Ex-Texas Wesleyan professor pleads guilty in child porn case
May. 23, 2012
By Domingo Ramirez Jr.
FORT WORTH -- A former Texas Wesleyan University professor who was accused of downloading and trading child pornography for the last 10 years pleaded guilty today to distributing it.
The professor, identified as Michael K. Gilbert, 29, of Fort Worth, will now be sentenced on Nov. 26 before U. S. District Judge Terry Means. He faces a maximum of 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine on the federal charge of distribution of child pornography.
Gilbert has been in custody since his arrest in early April.
His name was off the faculty list on the university website hours after his arrest.
An investigation of Gilbert began when an FBI agent, undercover and using a file-sharing software program, downloaded still images of child pornography from Gilbert's computer IP address in Fort Worth, according to a federal criminal complaint.
Federal agents searched Gilbert's home and seized his computer.
While agents were at the home, Gilbert admitted using file-sharing software and said he had been downloading and trading child porn for about 10 years, according to the criminal complaint.
Federal authorities examined his computer and found images and video files of minors engaging in sexual acts, the criminal complaint stated.
On his Facebook page, Gilbert noted that he taught general, analytical and instrumental chemistry at Texas Wesleyan.
A native of Shelbyville, Ky., Gilbert attended Bellarmine University and the University of Tennessee, according to his Facebook page.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/05/23/3981865/ex-texas-wesleyan-professor-pleads.html#storylink=cpy
But that is just you way of getting out of your position that it is somehow ok to profile all men as likely sexual deviates but not for all other groups such as Muslims as terrorists or blacks as criminals and so on.
You are a complete idiot.
Lockport Man Sentenced for Receipt of Child Pornography
Published on: 2012-06-05
BUFFALO—United States Attorney William J Hochul, Jr announced today that Harold N Hasse, 56, of Lockport, New York, who was convicted of receipt of child pornography, was sentenced to seven years in prison and 10 years’ supervised release by Chief United States District Judge William M Skretny.
Assistant United States Attorney Edward H White, who handled the case, stated that in June 2009, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Department executed a search warrant at the defendant’s Dysinger Road apartment and seized Hasse’s computer. A forensic examination revealed that the computer contained 266 videos and 118 images of child pornography.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
The sentencing is the culmination of an investigation on the part of special agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Christopher M Piehota; the New York State Police, under the direction of Major Christopher Cummings; and the Niagara County Sheriff’s Department, under the direction of Sheriff James Votour.
Additional assistance was provided by the Western New York Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, which conducted the forensic analysis of the defendant’s computer.
http://7thspace.com/headlines/414019/lockport_man_sentenced_for_receipt_of_child_pornography.html
You're the one who was profiled as being a pedophile for luring children with kittens in the park. And they were right to get you away from the children.
If you don't want to be profiled as a possible pedophile or child abductor, don't act like one.
Poor black co-workers of mine used to tell me stories of how they are constantly being profile as possible evil doers
Child porn victim seeks restitution after years of exploitation, shame
May 27, 2010
CLAIR JOHNSON Of The Gazette Staff
Vicky was 10 years old when her father began raping and sodomizing her. He sexually abused his daughter for two years, and he videotaped the abuse and distributed the images on the Internet.
The movies and photographs of Vicky (a pseudonym) are considered to be among the most widely circulated images of child pornography, said Carol Hepburn, a Seattle attorney representing Vicky in numerous child pornography cases across the country.
Images of Vicky have been identified by the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children in about 8,000 cases, she said.
“Some of these images were ones that he specifically made in order to share with other online pedophiles,” Hepburn said of Vicky’s father, who divorced Vicky’s mother when Vicky was a toddler. Some images were the result of people “placing orders, if you will,” she said. “He scripted what he was doing to her. It’s horrendous.”
Now a woman in her early 20s, Vicky is fighting back. In more than 80 federal court cases, including six in Montana, she is seeking restitution from those convicted of receiving or possessing images of her. Three of the Montana cases are in the Billings district.
Restitution is an emerging issue in federal child porn cases as victims are identified and are starting to submit claims. Judges across the country are grappling with how much restitution, if any, to order from those convicted of possessing or receiving the material but not creating it.
The first federal law addressing child pornography was passed in 1978 and prohibited the making and commercial distribution of obscene material involving children under age 16. In 1988, it became illegal to use a computer to depict or advertise child porn.
Over the years, a series of statutes and court rulings have refined and tightened child porn laws, making it a crime to knowingly possess, manufacture, distribute or receive the material. The penalties for conviction can be stiff. Receiving child porn carries a minimum mandatory five years to 20 years in prison and a maximum $250,000 fine.
Restitution in sexual exploitation cases has its roots in two 1994 laws addressing violent crime and violence against women. Those laws were the first to make restitution mandatory in sexual exploitation cases and certain other crimes.
Historically, courts ordered restitution for those convicted of sexually abusing a victim or producing child porn. But the mandatory restitution law applies to all crimes involving the sexual exploitation of children, including distributing, receiving or possessing child porn.
In February 2009, a federal judge in Connecticut said he would order $200,000 restitution from a man convicted of possessing and distributing the material. The case was settled for $130,000. Since then, numerous claims for restitution have been filed by victims in child porn cases. Restitution has ranged as high as $3.2 million, which was ordered in a Florida case under appeal.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Marcia Hurd said in court records that Vicky is among the first to make such restitution claims.
“Vicky and other child victims like her continue to suffer separate and distinct injuries from the consumers of child pornography who acquire her images,’’ Hurd said. While production may be immediately harmful to the child involved, the distribution of images exacerbates the harm by being an invasion of privacy and by providing the market that led to the creation of the images in the first place, she said.
The question is how to quantify the harm caused to Vicky in a restitution order, Hurd said.
Defense attorneys say the restitution law is being misapplied.
Assistant federal defender Mark Werner of Billings said the restitution issue needs to be settled. So far, no circuit court has ruled on the matter.
The mandatory-restitution law says that the defendant shall pay restitution for any offense to the victim. It defines “victim’’ as“the individual harmed as the result of a commission of a crime.”
The law further says restitution includes costs incurred by the victim for medical services, including physical or psychological care; physical or occupational therapy; transportation; lost income; attorney fees; and “any other losses suffered by the victim as a proximate result of the offense.”
Werner is appealing to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals the sentence and restitution recently ordered for Billings resident Keith Edward Baroun, 35, who admitted receiving child porn on his computer.
Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull sentenced Baroun to 13 years and nine months in prison and ordered $3,000 restitution to Vicky. Cebull held Baroun responsible for 2,700 images, including 36 videos. Three of the videos were of Vicky.
Hepburn filed a restitution claim seeking $231,891 for Vicky, mostly for counseling.
Werner argued against restitution in a sentencing memo, saying that the “proximate cause” language requires a victim’s losses be tied to a defendant’s specific conduct. Vicky’s attorney, he said, is “making the same restitution claim in cases across the country, without regard to the actual culpability of the individual defendant involved. This is unfair and attempts to distort the restitution process.”
Cebull rejected Werner’s argument and ordered $3,000 restitution in his first ruling on the issue.
“It is certainly difficult, if not impossible, to determine the exact degree of victimization. However, this defendant and every person who possesses these images causes a real and cognizable harm to the victims,” Cebull said.
Cebull, following what some other judges have done, derived the $3,000 figure as 2 percent of a $150,000 maximum civil remedy for personal injuries in child sexual exploitation cases. Cebull said he was confident the amount was less than the actual harm Baroun caused Vicky and therefore resolved any “due-process concerns.”
Montana’s federal judges are split on the issue. Senior U.S. District Judge Jack Shanstrom in Billings has ordered $3,000 restitution in two cases, with one of the cases under appeal by the defense and restitution having been paid in the other case. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon in Great Falls also ordered $3,000 restitution in one case in which both parties agreed to the amount.
U.S. District Judge Don Molloy in Missoula has denied restitution in two cases, with the prosecution appealing in one of the cases.
In denying restitution in the case under appeal, Molloy ruled that the government had not met its burden to prove that the defendant, Robert James Lawton, caused Vicky’s losses. “While‘Vicky’ has undoubtedly suffered great harm because of the abuse she suffered and the availability of these images on the Internet, there is not sufficient evidence to show that her losses were proximately caused by Lawton’s conduct,’’ he said.
Neither Vicky, nor any other victim, appeared at sentencing, Molloy said. And the government did not provide any evidence, other than documents already submitted by Vicky’s lawyer, to demonstrate that Lawton was responsible for losses sustained by Vicky, he said.
Werner said he doesn’t think defense attorneys are disputing that possession contributes to child porn trafficking. But that doesn’t answer the question of what specific damage the possession caused the victim, Werner said. The victim may have “a general anxiety” knowing images are out there, but that is “a long way’’from addressing restitution requirements, he said.
Billings defense attorney Sandy Selvey has raised similar arguments in appealing a sentence and restitution order imposed on his client, Richard John Baxter. Shanstrom sentenced Baxter, 41, of Billings, in September to more than 17 years in prison and ordered $3,000 restitution for receipt of child porn, including images of Vicky.
Hepburn requested $150,247 restitution for Vicky.
Selvey argued that the government had to prove the amount of Vicky’s losses that are a “direct result’’ of Baxter possessing her images. “The losses described in Vicky’s victim impact statement and as alleged by the government are generalized and caused by her initial abuse as well as the general existence and dissemination of her pornographic images,’’ Selvey said in his appeal. “No effort has been made to show the portion of these losses specifically caused by Richard Baxter’s possession of images of Vicky. Mr. Baxter simply is not responsible for any loss to Vicky.’’
Vicky is seeking restitution because she needs a lot of therapy, Hepburn said.
Vicky’s father was eventually tracked down overseas where he had fled, was prosecuted and is now serving a 50-year federal sentence, but the images are still out there, Hepburn said.
“It really is almost viral the way they can spread,’ she said.
Vicky has no control over who sees the intimate, humiliating and embarrassing images, Hepburn said. “The anonymity of the crime is part of the damage for her,’ she said.
Vicky worked in a retail job but found she was having anxiety attacks when waiting on male customers. Vicky would wonder if the customer was looking at her longer than normal and wondered if he had seen the pictures, Hepburn said.
“It’s helpful for her to have this acknowledged that this has done her harm,” Hepburn said. “She’s really focused on trying to be normal. She is really about encouraging other victims, survivors to come forward.”
Restitution requests are new, Hepburn acknowledged.
“You have to remember, there are very few of these victims who have the strength to even come forward and even say, ‘I’m out here. This happened to me,’ ” she said.
People who download child porn are responsible for harming victims because without the demand, the material would not be produced or spread over the Internet, Hepburn said. Congress, court rulings and the Supreme Court have said these children are victims and possessing child porn images harms them, she said. “They can’t point the finger and say not me,’’ she said. “People still think of this as a victimless crime, which it is not.’’
Distribution of child porn is a “horrendous violation of privacy,’’ Hepburn said. “It’s just like looking in the window when the abuse was happening.’’
Hepburn and Werner both recognize there are a variety of views on the issue.
“I think there are some very thoughtful opinions out there that do award restitution,” Hepburn said. Some judges, she said, have“very honest differences of opinion.’’
“This is a really difficult issue. Both sides can make reasonable arguments,” Werner said. “It may even go to the Supreme Court.”
.
http://billingsgazette.com/news/article_48495bee-694d-11df-b680-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1wyj0ntUK
Child Porn Bust: 18 Children Saved, 190 Predators Arrested, Feds Say
The Huffington Post
By Simon McCormack
06/08/2012
A joint effort by two federal agencies netted a massive number of alleged child predators.
A reported 190 sexual predators were captured and 18 children were saved in the month-long operation, according to a Homeland Security news release sent to The Huffington Post.
Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents worked together on the operation, which was aimed at finding individuals who possessed, received, transported, distributed, advertised or produced images or videos of child pornography, the release said.
Most of the May arrests were made in America, but there were also suspects apprehended in Spain, the Philippines, Argentina and the United Kingdom, the release said.
Those arrested included 54-year-old Thomas Wright, who is accused of making and possessing child pornography. Wright allegedly convinced a minor to "participate with him in illegal sexual conduct" while Wright photographed the encounters. He also allegedly secretly filmed the minor during other sexual acts.
Cedric Conner, 35, was arrested for allegedly assaulting a 7-year-old child he babysat.
"Let this operation be a warning to anyone who would think they can use the Internet to exploit children," ICE Director John Morton said in the release. "We are out there looking for you, we will find you, and you will be prosecuted."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/08/child-porn-bust-children-saved-predators-arrested_n_1581748.html
Matthew Allen with Homeland Security's local office says the operation targeted those exploiting children.
"Either physically exploiting them or victimizing them and exploiting them by trading child pornography which I think as we all know once it's introduced on the internet, it takes on a life of its own, and that victimization, exploitation goes on virtually forever," says Allen.
http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/18742393/3-child-porn-peddlers-from-phoenix-arrested-in-nationwide-operation
"I’ve seen cases of women collecting or trading child porn, but not very often and not somebody in that socio-economic strata," said Nancy Hagan, the longtime executive director of the Alliance for Children, a Fort Worth child advocacy center.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54269992-68/child-perdue-pornography-woman.html.csp
Monday, June 11, 2012
Socialite Charged With Child Pornography
By DAVID LEE
DALLAS (CN) - Federal prosecutors accuse Dallas-area socialite Erika Susan Perdue of amassing a child pornography collection so large she could not keep track of its contents.
Perdue, 41, of University Park, was indicted on two counts of transporting and shipping child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.
Federal agents raided her mansion in April after an FBI agent downloaded files from her computer over a peer-to-peer file sharing program in January.
Using the handle Classybitch, Perdue shared 287 files, most of which depicted child pornography, according to an affidavit by FBI Special Agent Deborah Michaels.
Several of the images and videos allegedly depict girls engaging in sex with adults.
When questioned, Perdue admitted that she had possessed and shared the child pornography since 1999, according to the affidavit.
"She confided that because she has collected so much child pornography, that she could not remember if she had transported the specific images and videos to law enforcement on those dates," Agent Michaels said in the affidavit. "She also confessed that she used file-sharing child pornography everyday, including the day prior."
Perdue admitted she traded in child pornography while her husband, a Dallas attorney, was away at work and said she was aware that others were downloading files that she shared, according to court documents.
Her husband is not named in the complaint, nor is he accused of any involvement.
The pornography is explicit and vile, according to the indictment.
For instance, File Name "! 2yo + mom+dadf..-4.wmv" contains the Description: "A video file depicting a female placing her tongue on the genitals of a minor nude female child. Also depicted is a male penetrating the genitals of the same minor female child," according to the indictment. Perdue is accused of transmitting this video to another software user outside of Texas.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/06/11/47314.htm
Feds break international child porn operation
By CHARLES WILSON, Associated Press – 3 days ago
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Investigators have busted a child pornography ring spread across the U.S. and Europe that produced and distributed sexually explicit images of babies and toddlers online, federal prosecutors in Indianapolis said Thursday.
Seven American men have been convicted and sentenced on various charges in the case, including three who were sentenced in federal court in Indianapolis on Wednesday, the U.S. attorney's office said. Two more who pleaded guilty are awaiting sentencing.
"This operation uncovered a dangerous and depraved group of criminals who were devoted to trading sexually explicit images of children under the age of five," Assistant U.S. Attorney General Larry Breuer said in a statement.
More than 20 suspects have been captured in nine states, and authorities are investigating yet more elsewhere in the U.S., as well as Sweden, Serbia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Josh Minkler said at an Indianapolis news conference that more than two dozen children in Indiana and elsewhere were abused in the production of the pornography.
"Children who far too often weren't old enough to comprehend the crimes committed against them," Minkler said. "Children who were raped in this state and were too young to ask for help."
Some of the suspects had legal custody of their victims, and those children have been removed, prosecutors said.
The "most prolific producer of child pornography" in the group was 26-year-old David Bostic, Assistant U.S. Attorney Brant Cook said.
Bostic persuaded parents to allow him to babysit and, thus entrusted, abused the children without their knowledge, Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve DeBrota said.
He was arrested in November 2010 after federal, state and local investigators raided his home in Bloomington, Ind., uncovering hundreds of pictures and videos on his computer of children engaged in sexual acts, including four girls aged from 2 months to 3 years and one 4-year-old boy who had been entrusted to his care.
He was convicted on 65 counts and sentenced to 315 years in prison.
Bostic's arrest heralded the launch of Operation Bulldog; further investigation of his computer led investigators to others in the group.
DeBrota said the members met though a website and traded videos and still images by email.
"When they found a like-minded individual with this particular attraction that was very powerful and helped them rationalize what they were doing — in their world — was OK," DeBrota said. "That ability to find a like-minded individual online that you couldn't find in the real world is a severe danger that comes with the Internet."
DeBrota told reporters that one suspect had an ultrasound image of an unborn baby whom the prosecutor characterized as a potential future victim. He declined to provide more details, citing the ongoing investigation.
"We have examples of offenders who were planning on having children for the purpose of having a class of victims," DeBrota said.
Shawn Kuykendall, 32, of Summerville, S.C., was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years, while 23-year-old Javahn Algere, of New Orleans, got 12 years and 21-year-old Richard Szulborski, of East Texas, Pa., was sentenced to a 15-year term.
Sentenced earlier were Bostic; Danny L. Druck, 58, of Louisville, Ky., eight years; Chris Reid, 37, of Saginaw, Mich., 35 years; Todd King, 41, of Crestline, Calif., eight years.
Nicholas King, 28, of Bellingham, Wash., and 22-year-old Jeremy Labrec, of Lubbock, Texas, have pleaded guilty and await sentencing, prosecutors said.
"Child pornography rings pose a threat to children around the world and we will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who participate in such groups," Breuer said.
Operation Bulldog was a result of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide Department of Justice initiative to combat online child sexual exploitation and abuse.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h2GdShcjP4wvdM5rP2Lmyv3swe6A?docId=e461f7ba3abb4e2daec55593dfc0be2f
Those arrested included 54-year-old Thomas Wright, who is accused of making and possessing child pornography. Wright allegedly convinced a minor to "participate with him in illegal sexual conduct" while Wright photographed the encounters. He also allegedly secretly filmed the minor during other sexual actsCedric Conner, 35, was arrested for allegedly assaulting a 7-year-old child he babysat. .
