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Ohio ex-DJ gets prison in child porn case
JOE MANDAK
Associated Press
Published: August 30, 2011
PITTSBURGH (AP) — A former morning show disc jockey was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison on child pornography charges and has paid restitution to a woman who appears in some of the pictures he viewed.
William "Scott" Kennedy, 55, of Hermitage, resigned from Y-103, an FM station in Youngstown, Ohio, after he was charged in 2009. He was sentenced Thursday in Pittsburgh.
Kennedy had pleaded guilty in May to possessing child pornography, including images of a woman known in court records by the pseudonym "Vicky."
The woman, who says she is victimized every time her image is viewed or shared, has submitted a claim for more than $1.2 million in damages for her ongoing suffering in conjunction with child pornography cases across the country.
Vicky is at least the third such victim, now an adult, to receive restitution from a federal child porn defendant in western Pennsylvania. In October, U.S. District Judge Nora Barry Fischer in Pittsburgh ordered a New Castle man to pay $1,000 to a woman whose uncle molested her when she was 4 and made videos of the abuse. That woman is now 22.
Kennedy agreed Thursday to pay $3,550 restitution for his "share" of harm done to Vicky.
Details about Vicky are filed in sealed court documents, but part of her victim-impact statement shared publicly with the court said, "Every day, people are trading and sharing videos of me as a little girl being raped in the most sadistic ways. ... I wish I could one day feel completely safe, but as long as these images are out there, I never will."
Vicky has received more than $261,000 from other child pornography defendants, which means she can still seek more than $960,000 — in piecemeal claims — as others are convicted of possessing images of her.
Kennedy was caught when an undercover federal agent monitoring child pornography chat rooms discovered the DJ had uploaded images in one forum and was chatting about phone sex.
Kennedy's attorney, James Ross, did not immediately return a call and e-mail for comment Thursday. When his client pleaded guilty in May, Ross said Kennedy "has been a good and productive member of this community, and it's unfortunate that this has happened."
Senior U.S. District Judge Alan Bloch also fined Kennedy $25,000 and ordered him to spend the rest of his life on probation after his release from prison.
John P. Kelleghan, the special-agent-in-charge of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations office in Philadelphia, said the case is significant. ICE investigates child pornography because the agency includes the former U.S. Customs Service, which monitored international trafficking in child pornography.
Far from a "victimless crime," child porn depicts children in positions that are "very precarious and very difficult to see and look at," Kelleghan said.
"Our hope is that (people who share child pornography) don't take it to the next level where they're actually touching and acting on children," Kelleghan said. But even those who only view such material drive the "demand to victimize new children. It's a constant, vicious cycle that these guys are involved in."