2007 Pedophile Roundup – the Year in Review

2007 was a banner year for pedophiles. No hyperbolic commentary or incredulous fictionalization can substitute for the raw truth and here it is:

• On January 19, 2007, a 15 year old Bangor Maine boy was charged with a felony for downloading child pornography and became the first juvenile in that city to be charged with a sexual cybercrime.
• On February 20, 2007, 66 year old former Orange County California Superior Court Judge Ronald Kline collapsed in court after learning that he was being sentenced to 27 months in prison for possessing child pornography. He previously plead guilty and acknowledged having more than 100 sexually explicit images of young boys stored on disks and his home computer. Kline’s diary entries contained accounts of him following children in shopping malls and being attracted to boys when he worked as a volunteer baseball umpire.
• In March 2007, before he became a California and national sensation, admitted girl lover Jack McClellan was causing quite a stir in Seattle for creating website which was virtual “how-to” pedophile guide, complete with the best places in western Washington state to see little girls, and tips on how to avoid getting caught by the police. McClellan says his purpose is to promote association, friendship and legal, consensual hugging and cuddling between men and pre-pubescent girls. He admitted to FOX News that his “age of attraction” is between 3 and 11 years old.
• On March 27, 2007, a Carson City, Nevada man was sentenced to prison for possessing more than 800 images of child pornography. That’s not really the story though. Carson City District Judge Bill Maddox’s views on child sex abuse were much more newsworthy: “These kinds of offenses are problems with impulse control. When I say that, it’s my understanding that most men are sexually attracted to young women. When I say young women I don’t just mean women that…you should be attracted to. I mean women from the time they’re 1 all the way up until they’re 100.” Maddox noted the legal terms malum in se, a Latin phrase meaning an act that is “inherently evil,” and malum prohibitum, which means acts that are not necessarily inherently immoral or hurtful, only wrong by statute. He said child pornography could be considered malum prohibitum because in some countries and cultures it is acceptable to engage in sexual conduct with young girls. “As an example, having sex with a girl between 12 and 16 is prohibited because we say it’s prohibited. It’s because we decided as a civilized society you do not want adults engaging in sexual conduct with children below 16 years of age, which flies in the face of our, I guess for lack of a better description, our normal impulses,” he said. “I guess we could just ignore them, say it’s just like a traffic ticket, it’s malum prohibitum, it’s only against the law because it’s prohibited. Or we could say that because we’re trying to control what’s an otherwise natural impulse there has to be consequences. Maddox said he wanted to send a message to others in the community who might possess images of child porn.
• In early April 2007, renowned child psychiatrist, Dr. William Ayres, 75, a former president of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, was booked in San Mateo, California and charged with lewd and lascivious acts involving multiple child victims under 14.
• On April 18, 2007, a former St. Joseph, Kansas pharmacist was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for possessing and distributing Masha Allen’s images. After Masha’s victim impact statement was read in court, Walter Sewell, 42, apologized to the children whose pictures he collected. “When I started looking at these images, I never thought there was a victim,” Sewell said. “It was only after I stopped looking at them did I realize there were…. I apologize to all the children.”
• On April 24, 2007, a visiting law professor at California’s Santa Clara University School of Law, Murdaugh Stuart Madden, was arrested by the feds for having child pornography on his school-issued laptop computer and on another computer issued to him by the Pace University School of Law in White Plains, New York where he previously taught.
• On April 30, 2007, a Jersey City, New Jersey father who raped his teenage daughter over several years and ordered her to throw two newborns he had fathered with her down an air shaft was sentenced to 35 years in prison. One of the infants survived and is in foster care, the other one died after being thrown down the shaft. The 45 year old man told a psychologist that he didn’t view the teenager as his daughter, but “as a person I’m in love with,” adding, “I would not have sex with her if she had not seduced me.”
• On May 1, 2007, former Albemarle, Virginia girl’s soccer coach Raja Charles Jabbour, a Lebanese citizen, was sentenced to nine years in prison for soliciting sex with a minor online and for possessing hundreds of sexually explicit images of children, some involving bestiality.
• In early May 2007, an 11-year old boy said he saw Florida resident William Arthur Bishop molesting an 8-year-old girl behind bushes near the pool at the Walt Disney Swan hotel. Bishop has a long record of sex offenses against children.
• In May 2007, German television ran an expose which revealed that the virtual world Second Life is becoming a platform for real and virtual child pornography. A German, whose avatar—or online character—is a 13-year-old girl has been offering to provide real photos that contain child pornography to other denizens of the online service. Beside the offer of real child porn, German television also documented that online characters depicting children were being virtually raped and abused. Child pornography using computer-generated images is illegal in Germany, punishable from between three months to five years in jail. Virtual child pornography is legal in the United States.
• In late May 2007, a 31-year-old Portland, Oregon man was sentenced to more than 24 years in federal prison for posing online as a teenage boy dying of leukemia in an effort to coerce young girls into sending him sexually explicit images. Joshua Kistler chatted regularly with at least nine girls nationwide who ranged in age from 12 to 14. He even sent them pictures of his stepson, an actual 15-year old, to further his story. Several victims said they loved and trusted Kistler, who asked them to send photos of them nude or perform sexual acts for him in front of Web cameras. Kistler, who pleaded guilty to charges of producing child pornography, apologized saying “I’m sorry for the harm I’ve caused, I wasn’t aware I was causing any harm.” The victim whose case led to Kistler’s arrest was a Utah girl who started chatting online with him when she was 12. According to DOJ, Kistler told the victim that he cut off contact with another girl because of the Utah girl’s jealousy and that the other girl killed herself. Overcome with guilt, the Utah girl attempted suicide and then attempted suicide a second time after her mother tried to stop the relationship. Kistler told agents that he knew what he was doing was wrong and that he had always “been a collector.”
• On June 1, 2007, a former Arlington County, Virginia youth sports coach who once headed the Virginia ACLU pleaded guilty to charges that he purchased sadistic child pornography. Charles Rust-Tierney, 51, admitted that he accessed more than 850 pornographic images of children as young as 4, including a six-minute video depicting the sexual torture of children set to a song by the band Nine Inch Nails. Rust-Tierney used a computer in his 10-year-old son’s bedroom to view the files, some of which were contained on CDs bearing an American flag logo. Judge Theresa C. Buchanan, who declined to release Rust-Tierney at his initial hearing in March, described the material on the computer as “the most perverted and nauseating and sickening type of child pornography” she had seen in 10 years on the bench. The sentencing judge later added that “the term ‘child pornography’ does not convey the depravity” of the images that were downloaded. Rust-Tierney told the court that he viewed child porn as a way to escape “despair” in his personal life.
• In June 2007, a 16-year-old girl who endured being sold into prostitution by her mother went to Houston police after seeing her younger sister also forced to perform sex acts. The teenager had complied with her mother—who even distributed business cards offering her daughters for sex —but feared that her 14-year-old sister would be hurt.
• In June 2007, British police announced that they smashed a global Internet pedophile ring that broadcast live-streamed videos of children being abused, investigating more than 700 suspects worldwide and rescuing 31 children in a 10-month probe. The ring was traced to an Internet chat room called ”Kids the Light of Our Lives” that featured images of children being subjected to horrific sexual abuse, including the streaming live videos. Authorities said they used surveillance tactics normally used against terrorism suspects and drug traffickers to infiltrate the pedophile ring at its highest level.
• In Muskegon, Michigan a mother accused of arranging a sex pact to allow her boyfriend to have sex with her 15-year-old daughter while the woman recuperated from surgery was sentenced in June 2007 to 12 to 22 years in prison. The 41-year-old woman pleaded no contest and agreed to the arrangement because she feared losing her boyfriend, Michael Fitzgibbon, while recuperating from the operation on her abdomen. Fitzgibbon, 37, was sentenced in March to up to 15 years on each of four counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct after prosecutors said he, the woman and her daughter signed the contract. In exchange for sex, the 15-year-old testified she was to be paid and receive privileges, such as piercings, hair dyeing and permission to stay overnight with her own boyfriend.
• In June 2007, James Darden, an eighth-grade Teaneck, New Jersey English teacher who had just won a prestigious teaching award, was was charged with aggravated sexual assault after his former student told prosecutors that from the ages of 13 to 15 she and Darden, who is now 36, had sex in his house, his car, his classroom and the men’s bathroom at Thomas Jefferson Middle School.
• In July 2007, federal prosecutors charged that a Philadelphia defense lawyer in a child pornography case allowed his client to view the sexually graphic evidence in such “excruciating detail” that the victims were being abused anew. The feds went to court to ask a judge to limit the discovery process for John Worman, 40, who allegedly filmed himself having sex with girls and infants as young as 3 months old. The evidence includes 11,000 videos of Worman having sexual contact with minors.
• In August 2007, a former Army major and a teacher’s wife in Britain were exposed as members of a child abuse ring in which young victims were offered for sex on the Internet. The couple subjected two 12-year-olds to an afternoon of abuse which left the youngsters devastated. School governor Archibald Wood, 60, appeared to be a pillar of the community. On the other side of the country, businesswoman Monica McCanch, 55, cut an equally respectable figure as the divorced wife of a grammar school teacher. But behind closed doors the two were involved in an Internet plot to abuse two young children after responding to a chatroom posting by Steven Horton, 44, who was looking for paedophiles who wanted to ‘educate’ a boy and girl.
• In late August 2007, Polish police arrested 49 people, including teachers and clergy, and seized computers and thousands of CDs and DVDs containing child pornography in early morning raids across Poland. Among those arrested were teachers, a karate teacher, a board member of a major bank and members of the clergy.
• On September 6, 2007, a former Laurens County, South Carolina teacher pleaded guilty to having sex with at least five students. Allenna Williams Ward, 23, a seventh-grade language arts teacher at Bell Middle School, had sex with several students in cars, parks, a hotel and at the school. Police said Ward had sex with at least five boys: three 14-year-olds, and two 15-year-olds.
• On September 10, 2007, Kenneth John Freeman, a former deputy sheriff on the Marshals Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s most-wanted list, agreed to be extradited from Hong Kong to the United States. Freeman, 44, a computer adviser and bodybuilder, fled his home in Seattle last year after his 17-year-old daughter told her mother that he assaulted her four years earlier. Authorities charge that Freeman raped his daughter over a two-year period, starting when she was 10 years old. He videotaped the scenes and posted them online in “one of the most widely downloaded child pornography videos” in recent history, seen by millions. Freeman has not directly addressed the sexual abuse allegations against him but said “he never physically hurt or threatened” his daughter. “I’m not nearly as bad as they say and I’m not as good as I wish I was,” Freeman said in a statement. The statement ended with a message apparently addressed to his daughter. “Pretty little tiger, please try to remember me well. I will always love you. Goodbye.”
• On September 17, 2007, John David R. Atchison, 53, an Assistant United States Attorney from the northern district of Florida, was arraigned in U.S. District Court on suspicion of traveling to Detroit to have sex with a minor. Atchison flew from Pensacola, Florida to Detroit intending to have sex with a 5-year-old girl. He was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. A detective, acting as the child’s mother, arranged a sexual encounter between Atchison and her 5-year-old daughter. Detectives said Atchison suggested the mother tell her daughter that “you found her a sweet boyfriend who will bring her presents.” When the undercover detective expressed concern about physical injury to the 5-year-old girl as a result of the sexual activity, Atchison responded, “I am always gentle and loving; not to worry, no damage ever, no rough stuff ever. I only like it soft and nice.” When the undercover detective asked how Atchison can be certain of no injury, he responded, “Just gotta go slow and very easy. I’ve done it plenty.” Atchison, who later committed suicide in jail, was president of a youth athletics organization. He described himself online as a family man. His wife is a science teacher at Gulf Breeze High School. Gregory R. Miller, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, stated that he was “deeply saddened by the arrest” adding “we are, of course, concerned about the welfare of Mr. Atchison’s family. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them.” There was no mention of any concern for Atchison’s “plenty” of presumed victims.
• A man honored as among the best teachers in Utah pleaded guilty on September 20, 2007 to felony sex charges involving 11 students at his suburban classroom. Frank Laine Hall, 37, who taught first grade in the Salt Lake City suburb of Riverton until his arrest is facing up to 30 years to life in prison. Hall pleaded guilty to 10 counts of attempted aggravated sex abuse of a child and one count of sex abuse of a child in a plea agreement. Hall was initially accused of putting his hand inside the pants of three girls at Rosamond Elementary School when eight other students came forward with similar accounts.
• On October 3, 2007, former Cravath, Swaine & Moore associate James P. Colliton plead guilty to rape
  charges stemming from his sexual relationships with three underage girls. He agreed to one-year prison sentences on each charge, to be served concurrently and also agreed to register as a sex offender. Prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office alleged that Colliton, a former tax lawyer, paid the mother of a 15-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister to have sex with the teens, allowing the latter to move into a midtown Manhattan apartment he maintained while living primarily in Poughkeepsie with his wife and five children. He also admitted to paying a third under-aged girl for sex.
• In October 2007, presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani refused to strike a blow against child sex abuse by firing his lifelong friend Alan Placa who is employed by Giuliani Partners. Placa was accused in 2003 by a Suffolk County, New York grand jury of both molesting boys and covering up others’ abuse. Placa is on an apparently unlimited administrative leave from the Rockville Center Diocese and has been ever since Newsday named him as a child abuser in 2002. Placa was the legal advisor in the 1980s to the House of Affirmation which provided psychological counseling services to priests accused of sex abuse. The grand jury report includes excerpts from a letter in which Placa brags about his ability to settle multi-million dollar clergy abuse claims for “$20,000 to $100,000.” One person who worked at the facility called it a “pedophile boot camp,” while an abuse survivor called it a “breeding ground for sexual predators.”
• In late October 2007, a Naples, Florida woman who discovered her young daughter having sex—including with the mother’s own boyfriend—went on trial for hiring someone to forcibly pierce the girl’s genitalia to make sex uncomfortable. The girl who was 13 at the time testified that her mother asked a tattoo artist to shave her head to make her unattractive to boys and later held her down during the piercing. “She was trying to protect me, but it hurt me,” the girl testified. “It not only hurt me physically, but it hurt me mentally. That’s emotionally scarring. That’s physical abuse.”
• On November 6, 2007, a 61-year-old adjunct professor at the University of New Haven in Connecticut was arrested on federal charges of trying to entice a minor for sex. Irving Mittleman was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport after the professor struck up an Internet chat with an undercover sheriff’s detective. Mittleman, who apparently didn’t know about US Attorney David Atchison who was caught in September in the same sting, thought he was talking with a mother offering her 5 and 3-year-old children for sex.
• Also on November 6, 2007, an employee of the National Children’s Museum in Washington was arrested on child pornography charges, accused of sending about 80 explicit images to others including a NYC detective. Robert A. Singer, 49, of Falls Church, Virginia, was arrested at his home on charges that he sent pornographic images to what he thought was a 33-year-old mother and her 12-year-old daughter after Singer initiated contact in an AOL chat room called “Cuties.” The images sent by Singer from his computer at the museum depicted sexual acts between minors and adults. Singer, communicating as “Badboy2,” instructed the daughter to “just delete it when you are done” after sending two images depicting child pornography.
• In November 2007, forty-six people were arrested in the UK as part of an operation to dismantle a global paedophile network after an investigation into a website that sold tailor-made videos of children being abused. The Italian-based site sold files and DVDs to 2500 people around the world including teachers, swimming instructors, lawyers and IT executives. Authorities said the website sold more than 150 videos of girls aged 9 to 16 made mainly in his private studio in Ukraine. Europol said 23 children involved had been identified. Customers could order tailor-made videos in which children held a sign with their name. Some customers even attended the video shoots or to make their own private videos. The Ukrainian girls were promised modeling careers and paid €20 to €40 for the sexually explicit photo shoots.
• On November 12, 2007, a 79-year-old Roman Catholic nun pleaded no contest to two counts of indecent behavior with a child for alleged sexual encounters with two male students at a church convent and school where she was principal during the 1960s. The nun, Norma Giannini, allegedly had dozens of sexual encounters with with students including intercourse. One man said the nun told him in 1965, when he was 13, to open the buttons of her habit, but he was shaking so badly he could not do so. He said she then unbuttoned her clothing and had him touch her breasts. The first incident was followed by 60 to 80 others, including two involving sexual intercourse. Another man said he had sexual contact with the nun more than 100 times beginning when he was in seventh grade with at least one incident involving sexual intercourse.
• In late November 2007, Dallas authorities announced that they found child pornography among the possessions of a prosecutor who fatally shot himself last year when police arrived at his home as part a sting arranged by television’s “Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator.” When they knocked on the door of his home last November, police planned to arrest Louis “Bill” Conradt Jr., 57, on a warrant accusing him of soliciting sex from a minor. They said Conradt, the former Kaufman County district attorney, had online sexual chats with an adult posing as a 13-year-old boy. The state investigation into Conradt’s death found evidence of graphic online chats. Three laptops, a cell phone and several computer disks found in the home also “all contained pornographic material (and) some included child pornography.”
• On November 28, 2007, Hartford, Connecticut investigators announced that a doctor who once faced child abuse allegations kept a staggeringly large collection of child pornography, found nearly a decade after his death, and that there were hundreds of victims. The owner of a West Hartford home formerly owned by Dr. George Reardon found the images—50,000 35mm slides and more than 100 8mm movie reels—in a hidden storage space during a renovation project in May. Investigators said there is evidence linking the images to Reardon, who they said had a state-of-the-art photo lab in his house, and they are concerned that the pornography was shared with others. At least 10 victims contacted police who believe there may be hundreds of victims who ranged in age from about 6 to 15 when the pornography was made, mostly from the 1960s through the 1980s. Reardon, who was chief of endocrinology and practiced for more than 30 years at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, died in 1998. He resigned in 1993 amid accusations that he took advantage of youngsters in his care dating to when he was a medical student in the 1950s.
• On December 7, 2007, Bernie Ward, a popular San Francisco liberal radio talk show host and former Catholic priest, was indicted by a grand jury on two federal counts of possession and distribution of child pornography. The 56-year-old radio personality says he was doing research for a book. Ward reportedly sent some of the images to a woman in Oakdale, outside Modesto, who called police who then referred it to the FBI.
• On December 12, 2007, a former attorney for a prominent church in Greenwich, Connecticut was sentenced to six months of home confinement for destroying the ex-music director’s laptop computer containing child pornography. The music director, Robert Tate, was convicted of possessing child pornography, but prosecutors and a judge disclosed that Tate had a long history of sexually abusing children. Tate brought child prostitutes from New York to the church and sexually abused children in New York City, the Philippines and Thailand. A federal judge sentenced attorney Philip Russell to six months of home confinement, a $25,000 fine and 240 hours of community service. Russell, who apologized in court, voluntarily agreed to have his law license suspended and will likely be disbarred. Russell’s attorneys have said Russell’s wife and daughter attended the church, which was very helpful to his wife when she was ill. He destroyed the evidence to avoid a church scandal.
• Finally, no Pedophile Roundup Year in Review would be complete without news of the R&B singer R. Kelly. On December 21, 2007, R. Kelly avoided having his bond revoked in a child pornography case, but a Chicago judge admonished him for missing a court hearing. Kelly, 40, pleaded not guilty to child pornography charges for allegedly videotaping sex acts with a young teenage girl in or before 2000. He missed his court appearance when his tour bus was delayed in Utah. The judge told Kelly, who travels by bus, that he would have to overcome his fear of flying so as to guarantee he would not miss any future court dates. The judge ordered Kelly to fly back to Chicago if his timely arrival for a court date was in question and Kelly agreed.

If you’ve made it this far just remember that none of these fine upstanding perpetrators would EVER consider adopting a child, either domestically or internationally. After all, if “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” then truly “adoption doesn’t harm children, pedophiles harm children.” In the timeless words of NCFA president Thomas Atwood, during his CNN interview on Masha Allen’s pedophile adoption, “think of the children, this is what it’s all about.”

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