Posted on 12/23/2007 5:12:28 AM PST by csvset
Man Charged With 5 Counts Of Possession Of Child Porn
John Stelmack, 60, the principal at Scott Lake Elementary School in Lakeland, was arrested at his home, located at 5749 Deer Track Trail in Lakeland, and charged with five counts of possession of child pornography.
Stelmack was suspended from his job as principal by the Polk County School Board on Dec. 14 after an administrative investigation led to the seizure of a black briefcase that contained pornographic images from his office, sheriff's deputies said.
According to a Polk County sheriff's report, Stelmack took routine photographs of children in a school setting, including a 10-year-old who attended Scott Lake Elementary last year, and digitally superimposed their faces onto nude images. The identified girl's facial image was on four of the pictures, and another unidentified female child's face was placed on the body of another nude image, the report stated.
"The photographs that Stelmack manipulated into child pornography are graphic and repulsive," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. "To think that a school principal, someone who is entrusted with the safety and well-being of hundreds of school children, would do something like this is incomprehensible."
Stelmack is married and has two adult children. He came to Polk County from the New York state school system.
Detectives are serving a search warrant at his home and further charges may be filed against him depending on what is found, deputies said.
Stelmack was booked into the Polk County Jail on a $100,000 bond.
The Polk County Sheriff's Office said it has been conducting an investigation, which is ongoing, in cooperation with the Polk County School Board.
Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.
Actually, yes.
The new laws, pushed by overzealous neurotics, don't make a distinction between a real victim and an imaginary one. That's just the way it is.
ping
Camp photog's composite photos using girls' faces not child porn
CONCORD, N.H. -
The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled Friday that sexual images a camp photographer created by combining the faces of young girls with women's bodies were not child pornography.
The ruling overturned the child pornography conviction of Marshal Zidel, who was sentenced in June 2006 to up to seven years in prison. Zidel, 61, of Somerville, Mass., was a photographer at Camp Young Judea in Amherst, where authorities say he superimposed pictures of 15-year-old girls onto images of naked adults.
The court ruled the pictures do not violate child pornography laws, partly because they did not involve sexual acts by actual children and partly because they were not deliberately distributed. Justices cited a 2002 ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court said federal child pornography laws went too far in trying to ban computer simulations and other fool-the-eye depictions of teenagers or children having sex. Such "virtual pornography" is protected as free speech, the court said.
"When no part of the image is 'the product of sexual abuse' ... and a person merely possesses the image, no demonstrable harm results to the child whose face is depicted in the image," Associate Justice James Duggan wrote for the court.
But in a dissent, Associate Justice Gary Hicks noted the 2002 ruling let stand another section of the federal law that bans pornographic images created by computer alteration of innocent pictures of children, such as the grafting of a child's school picture onto a naked body.
Hicks also rejected the argument that the children were not harmed.
"I believe that a child need not actually engage in the sexual activity depicted in morphed child pornography to be a victim of sexual exploitation," he said.
New Hampshire courts have considered such questions before. In 2002, former prep school teacher David Cobb tried to get a new trial on hundreds of child pornography charges by arguing that his pictures - most made by pasting children's faces from clothing catalogues onto images of naked adult bodies - were artistic images protected by the Supreme Court ruling. He lost several appeals to the trial court, state Supreme Court and federal court, and was released last year after spending 11 years in prison.
The former teacher from Philips Academy in Andover, Mass., was convicted of attempted sexual assault and child pornography after being arrested with a 12-year-old boy and a backpack full of pictures in Farmington.
Office lady: “No, I am sorry, the Principal is busy in his office just now...” Sick.
He must think he’s a Catholic priest.
Go figure.
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