E-mail Story
Print Friendly
Send E-mail
Reprint story
Speakup and View Comments
Friday, June 26, 2009
Day of Reckoning in Child Pornography Case
By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Journal Staff Writer
Roy Richardson Jr. certainly didn't look like a threat to society, sitting there in court with his neatly thatched white hair and his kiddie porn counselor.
It had been three years since Albuquerque police found evidence of the dirty little secret at his Taylor Ranch home to get to this day of reckoning.
And that meant three years of his neighbors waiting, speculating and scaring themselves silly with salacious nightmares of Richardson, 62, as a dirty old man preying on their kids, luring them lustily into his suburban two-car garage to do unspeakable things to them.
In reality, there was never any evidence of such debauchery at the Richardson house.
But neither had there been any kind of protective barrier between Richardson and the kiddies that might have given neighbors a modicum of comfort.
Now that Richardson has had his day in court, there is.
Well, sort of.
You might remember Richardson from my Feb. 27 column in which I detailed how Taylor Ranch neighbors were in a dither as they waited for sentencing day while he remained free to do ... whatever.
Their wait had begun in 2006 when police raided his home and hard drive after receiving reports that he had been ogling images of men diddling 4-year-olds and chatting with what he thought was a 13-year-old girl who, in "To Catch a Predator Style," turned out to be a detective.
He was indicted (finally) in 2008 on eight counts of sexual exploitation of children, pleaded guilty to three counts last January (the rest were dropped) and sentenced late last week to — drumroll, please — probation.
Not that prosecutor Clara Moran hadn't given an impressively impassioned and considered argument in favor of Richardson serving prison time for at least half of the maximum six years he could have faced.
Although Richardson's crimes had involved kiddie images and not the actual kiddie, she reasoned that it had not been for lack of trying.
He had been, after all, in the process of ensnaring his first flesh-and-blood victim — who turned out to be the detective — when caught.
"He was bold enough to do that," she told state District Judge Kenneth Martinez. "That is indicative to me of a very serious problem that goes beyond possession."
Neighbors had sent the judge piles of letters asking him to banish Richardson to Child Predator Island and, at the very least, force Richardson to register as a sex offender.
"Registration protects the community," Moran opined.
But public defender Jeff Rein reminded the judge that Richardson was a humble, hardworking man with nary a traffic ticket in his long life.
His flirtation with child porn, Rein explained, was simply misguided grief over the death of his first wife in 1999 (the second wife, there during this "grieving process," apparently being of no consequence).
Richardson had cooperated with authorities and jumped into counseling on his own, Rein said. Surely, that merited probation and a conditional discharge — meaning that, once probation was done, the charges would be washed away.
Sex offender counselor William Chambreau also told the judge that Richardson got off on photos but not flesh.
"This is between him and his computer," he said.
Then, Richardson spoke, asking the judge "very respectfully and very humbly" for a second chance in what had become his empty and contrite life.
Because in those three years of waiting for this day, he had lost everything.
His second marriage crumbled. He lost his job, lost many of his friends, lost his financial bearings, lost his self-respect. His was a life in a black hole, alone save for three dogs. No children, no family nearby. He had been humiliated, excoriated, excised from normal life.
"Sometimes, I feel I'm a member of a subhuman species," he said.
To which he will get little argument from his neighbors.
But the judge decided that this dark aspect of Richardson's psyche was newly born and not part of the makeup of a well-entrenched pervert who finally screwed up.
Martinez imposed the full six years, then suspended all of it.
Besides probation, Martinez ordered Richardson to register as a sex offender — a small victory for the neighbors.
In his final admonishment to Richardson to behave or else, Martinez uttered one final, inexplicable thought.
"You," he said, "should be someone's grandfather."
Neighbors — and grandfathers, for that matter — will likely be unhappy with Martinez, but speaking strictly in legal terms it's hard to fault his decision.
Then again, I don't have to live in Richardson's neighborhood.
There's no such thing as Child Predator Island, nor is there a paradise, or a neighborhood, completely free of these dark, demented souls.
We must find some way, then, to co-exist until there is.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Joline at 823-3603, jkrueger@abqjournal.com or follow her on Twitter @jolinegkg.
| We do not publish all comments, and we do not publish comments immediately. |
|
|
