A Washington C.H. man was sentenced to four years in prison Wednesday morning for pandering child pornography.
Clarence A. Walters, 26, pleaded guilty on Sept. 14 in Fayette County Common Pleas Court to one count of pandering obscenity involving a minor, a felony of the second degree, and one count of illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance, a felony of the fifth degree. The Fayette County Prosecutor’s Office dismissed five other counts in the indictment as part of the plea agreement.
Walters was indicted on May 15 on three counts of pandering obscenity involving a minor, with two of those second-degree felony counts and one a fourth-degree felony count; two counts of pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor, with one of those a second-degree felony count and the other a fourth-degree felony count; one count of illegal use of a minor in nudity oriented material or performance, a fifth-degree felony; and possessing criminal tools, a fifth-degree felony.
Walters must register as a Tier II Sex Offender. A Tier II Sex Offender is a person who has been convicted of, or pleaded guilty to, a sexually-oriented offense that is punishable by more than one year in prison. Tier II Sex Offenders are subject to registration and verification requirements every 180 days for a period of 25 years.
“Judge, in a nutshell, this young man most likely suffers because he is seriously under-educated. He has lived primarily at home since the ninth grade when he dropped out of school,” Walters’ defense attorney Bradley Koffel said. “To sentence someone to prison for looking at images with no direct evidence that he would ever act on those images, well there are studies that go both ways. More or less, this becomes a sexual dysfunction, with a lack of intimate relationships, or paraphilia where those suffering go out of their way to have sexual intercourse with inanimate objects — things that can’t hurt them. To need to put him in prison, I believe that there are no serious factors in play. As I stated delicately, as best I can, these children are victims, no doubt about it. But this offender is quite removed from these victims, and I don’t see the proximity to any physical or mental injuries suffered by the victims.”
When asked if Walters had anything to say in his defense, Walters told the court, “I didn’t know how serious this was. If I’d have known, I’d never have done it. I didn’t know this was something to go to prison for.”
The court sentenced Walters to four years for pandering obscenity involving a minor and one year for illegal use of a minor in nudity-oriented material or performance to be served concurrently to each other, for a total prison sentence of four years. Walters is subject to a mandatory five-year period of post-release control with the Adult Parole Authority.
Walters was awarded 16 days jail-time credit, and was ordered to pay the costs of prosecution.
