A Peoria man was sentenced today for his role in an international kiddie porn racket, and when the judge read his sentence, he cried like a baby.
David Dean, a 43-year-old trucker from Peoria, was sentenced today to 15 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised probation after pleading guilty to charges that he shared kiddie porn with an international organization of perverts that formed on an unnamed social-networking website. The group, according to authorities, had "restricted membership."
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Dean and other pervs distributed photos and videos that "graphically depicted prepubescent, male children, including some infants, being sexually abused and sometimes sodomized or subjected to bondage."
The group's leader, 57-year-old Stephen Sims, was sentenced in January to 17 years behind bars for his role in the racket. Sims, authorities say, referred to himself as the "den mother" for the perverts in his group who were located in countries across the globe, including the United States, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and Dubai.
"The members of this criminal enterprise committed the most unthinkable of crimes - they trafficked in chilling images of children and infants being brutally, sexually abused. And, they used a social networking website to distribute these images so that they could reach as many other like-minded individuals as they could," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. "Our children, who are the most vulnerable and innocent in our society, deserve every measure of protection we can give them. As this prosecution shows, we will use every tool we have to attack and dismantle these illegal child exploitation networks."
At his sentencing this morning, Dean apologized for his pervy-ness, telling the judge his actions were "outrageous" and that "it's clear I have a serious problem."
Then, he cried.
Our reaction to Dean's tears can be summed up in the video posted below:
