Attorney Calls For Crusade Against ‘Evil’ Of Child Porn

Manhattan attorney Andrew Vachss, who has spent most of 40 years working
with abused children, wants to raise the stakes for people who look at child
pornography online.

He wants mandatory minimum sentences for those convicted of possessing child
porn.

He wants the government to negotiate treaties with foreign countries to shut
down servers that host child-porn sites.

He wants child abuse to be part of the debate in this year’s presidential
race.

What Vachss does not want is to hear arguments like the one made by the
attorney for former Pfizer executive Alan Hesketh, who is accused of trading
hundreds of images of child porn on line. Hesketh’s attorney said at a bond
hearing that his client should be released from prison to get help for a
“sexual disorder.” The judge denied bond after hearing the British-born
Hesketh owns properties throughout the world, valued in the millions of
dollars.

Defense attorney Jonathan J. Einhorn of New Haven again referred to his
client’s psychiatric condition during a brief phone conversation last week.

“This is clearly an aberration in an otherwise exemplary life,” he said. “We
strongly believe it’s a manifestation of an illness.”

Pedophiles are not sick, Vachss said in a phone interview last week. They’re
evil.

“If it weren’t for guys like him, why would child porn be produced?” Vachss
said of Hesketh’s alleged on-line activities. “He’s financing the worst evil
I can think of.”

Vachss limits his legal practice to representing children, many of them
victims of abuse. He writes a series of hard-edged crime novels, the Burke
series, on the topic, culling the material from real-life cases. He helped
found a national organization that lobbies on behalf of kids and has
lectured audiences across the country on child sexual abuse.

He said that people who traffic in photographs that exploit children should
not be treated as mentally ill.

“What they are,” he said, “is repulsive perverts. Degenerates.”

Federal agents arrested Hesketh, 61, of Stonington, on March 26 after
confirming he traded hundreds of images of children engaged in sexual acts
while chatting online with a man from Buffalo, N.Y. He was fired two days
later from his job as Pfizer Inc.’s global patent director. He is being held
at a Rhode Island detention center.

If the case proceeds as others have, Hesketh could plead guilty long before
a jury would have heard the sordid details of his alleged crimes. A motion
filed April 4 indicated Hesketh’s attorney and the U.S. Attorney’s office
are attempting to resolve the case by plea agreement. A probable cause
hearing that had been scheduled for Thursday did not go forward.

Hesketh is charged with possessing, receiving and distributing child
pornography. There is no mandatory minimum sentence for possession of child
pornography in federal court, and Vachss cannot stand the thought that the
longtime pharmaceutical executive could be allowed to plead guilty to a
lesser charge.

“He pleads (guilty) to simple possession and gets the best treatment
possible,” Vachss predicted. He rattled off the names of a couple of
high-end treatment facilities for pedophiles.

Thomas Carson, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, said he could not
comment specifically on Hesketh’s case. He did point to several recent
child-porn cases in U.S. District Court that ended in prison time. He said
most of those who are convicted go either to Devens, a federal prison in
Ayer, Mass., or Butner, a facility in North Carolina. Both have medical
hospitals with sex-offender programs.

Federal agents said Hesketh and Gregory Nadolski of Buffalo exchanged 85
pictures during a chat session about, among other things, the sexual
molestation of children. They said that during the conversation, Hesketh
sent Nadolski a picture of an adult male raping an infant girl.

The picture is a crime scene, Vachss said.

“What they’re doing is getting the baby raped,” he said of people who would
trade such a photo. Vachss said in so-called child pornography the
participants are children, not actors, and they are not capable of
consenting.

Hesketh is an organic scientist who has been married for 39 years. He has
four children and five grandchildren. He told agents he has posed as
“Suzibibaby,” a 28-year-old New York City woman, for the past five years,
chatting online and viewing and trading images at home, on business trips
and at work. He admitted trading child porn for years using several online
identities.

Hesketh worked out of Pfizer’s New London office. He said when he traveled
he carried more than 1,000 images of child pornography on three compact
flash drives.

Pfizer spokeswoman Liz Power said the company does not allow employees to
use computer resources or systems that contain or promote abusive or
objectionable language or information that is illegal or obscene. She said a
number of technical controls block objectionable Web sites, prevent
peer-to-peer file sharing and remove unapproved software. Systems are
scanned several times a year for unapproved packages, she said.

Power did not comment specifically about Hesketh’s case.

Hesketh’s wife, Janet, told authorities she and her husband had been having
marital difficulties and were on the verge of divorce. She said last week in
court that he was the only one who could sort out the couple’s finances.
Three days later, Judge Donna F. Martinez granted Hesketh permission to meet
with his wife at the U.S. Marshal’s office in Hartford “for the purpose of
reviewing the family’s financial matters so that she may become familiar
with household expenses and income while he is incarcerated.”

Hesketh had worked for nine years as an executive at Glaxo Wellcome
pharmaceuticals in England before Pfizer hired him six years ago. He paid
$834,000 for a 3,371-square-foot colonial at 202 Montauk Ave. in Stonington
in 2003. He also owns homes in New York, England and the Isle of Man.

The judge denied Hesketh bond because she said he had the resources and
overseas connections to flee the country. Nadolski, the Buffalo man whose
arrest led agents to Hesketh, was released to home confinement after signing
a promise to appear in court. He is a deli worker, according to news
accounts.

Consumers of child pornography are a diverse group, according to the Center
for Missing and Exploited Children. Some are sexually interested in
prepubescent children or adolescents and use child pornography for sexual
fantasy and gratification. Some are sexually “indiscriminate,” others are
sexually “curious.”

Federal agents said Hesketh spoke almost as if he were “Suzibibaby,” his
on-line persona, following his arrest. The profile for Suzibibaby, located
in an erotic chat room “for women only” called Nifty Girls, depicts a blonde
woman sitting on a bed who likes to chat, “especially about erotic
subjects.”

Child pornography does two things, according to Vachss. It validates the
offenders, who take comfort knowing there are millions of people like them,
and it desensitizes children. Producers of child porn groom their subjects
by showing them pictures of other children engaged in sexual acts. If other
kids are doing it, it must be OK.

Connecticut toughened its child-pornography laws last year to include
mandatory minimum prison sentences. When cases have come up in New London
Superior Court, defendants have been sentenced to prison time.

“Our position has been that people have to go to jail for this,” said
prosecutor John P. Gravalec-Pannone. “This is not a victimless crime.”

Former Navy sailor Travis A. Pirtle, who said he was “caught up in a fantasy
world” when he viewed child pornography, is serving a 30-month sentence for
criminal attempt to entice a minor and third-degree possession of child
pornography. His attorney had argued for a shorter sentence, saying Pirtle
had undergone hypnotherapy and engaged in counseling in Bible studies to
“purge” the child-porn images from his mind.

Judge Susan B. Handy didn’t buy it.

“You have been exploiting children for your own gratification, and that is,
in the court’s mind, a despicable pastime,” she said at his sentencing last
year.

None of the child victims in the New London cases have been local, though
many have been identified as “known victims” by the National Center on
Missing and Exploited Children. New London Police Capt. William D. Dittman
said a New London detective is in training to analyze computers so the
department will not have to rely as much on the overburdened state
laboratory, which can take many months to test seized computers.

Much of the child porn that is circulating online could carry a “Made in the
U.S.A.” label.

“This is a domestic cottage industry,” said Grier Weeks, executive director
of PROTECT, a national group that lobbies to protect children from abuse,
exploitation and neglect.

“These movies are being created by people largely in this country and are
being sold, but also traded. Most of the perpetrators are adults that know
the children. These are family members and adults in the kids’ circle of
trust.”

“These movies are being created by people largely in this country and are
being sold, but also traded. Most of the perpetrators are adults that know
the children. These are family members and adults in the kids’ circle of
trust.”

“It’s out of control,” he said.

PROTECT is lobbying for passage of a bill that would authorize $1 billion
over the next eight years for federal law enforcement “to get serious about
this issue.”

© Copyright 2008 The Day Publishing Co.