Former Illinois State Rep. Keith Farnham, 66, was the co-sponsor of two bills to increase the punishment for child pornography may soon regret the effort. He has been charged with child pornography crimes related to hundreds of images and videos on his personal and state-owned computers as well as graphic online chats. In one such chat, he allegedly wrote that “12 is about as old as i can handle . . . i love them at 6 7 8.” In another chat, he allegedly bragged about sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl. He is not charged with that rape. In the sick and bizarre world of child porn, such a claim may have been a form of bragging than a true admission of a rape. Farnham resigned from office shortly after his state office was raided. He said that he needed to resign due to health concerns.
The indictment describes, if true, someone truly addicted to child porn. The investigative unit was given a lead that an email account kimdavid5582@yahoo.com was being used to trade child pornography on the Internet. kimdavid5582 was shown chatting with users about preferences among children. In a November conversation, Farmham describes a sexual encounter with a 6-year-old girl and a few weeks later allegedly said “I wish I had access to all the vids and pics ever made.” If the indictment is correct, he certain made progress in that goal with hundreds of such images and videos. It is surprising that a legislator who obviously knew this area was not more concerned about the well-known monitoring of these sites and sting operations.
To her credit, Democratic Rep. Mary Flowers, a longtime advocate for children, insisted: “I don’t want to cast him off as being guilty until he’s been found guilty.” That shows admirable restraint.
The combination of the files and the online chats presents a huge challenge for the defense in this case. He could easily receive the maximum of ten years given the aggravating elements of holding a position of public trust and the use of public computers. It is not clear if his medical issues will delay the trial. Farnham is being treated for bladder cancer and has pulmonary fibrosis, a condition that causes lung tissue to scar.
Farnham is a Navy veteran and a father. He ran a painting business in Elgin and is a graduate of the University of Maine.
Source: Chicago Tribune
Frankly:
You are correct in that it is possible to plant fake emails either sent or emplaced into an inbox stored on someone’s computer. There are forensic tecniques that can disprove, or at least place as unknown, those images as being intentionally owned by the defendant. Many jurisdictions do not require “Knowledge” in the possession of child pr0n, so it makes it difficult for defendants.
This might sound odd but if an investigation reveals 10,000 images of Adult actors stored and one or two being children, that could be argued as inadvertent. But it depends on how zero-tolerance the prosecution chooses to be.
But it becomes very difficult for the defense where a defendant goes to extra steps to hide the child pr0n compared to other files such as documents or spreadsheets. I had one case where I had to extract data on a laptop. Once (It Windows XP Professional) I found a directory the suspect had put a heavy encryption lock on a subdirectory that would be extremely dificult to break.
Well, I thought human nature would take place so I brought up a window to a command session to log in to the Administrator account, and low and behold he forgot that windows has a “blank” password by default for administrator. So I changed the ownership of the encrypted directory to “me” as adminstrator and they removed all the encryption, and had access to anything I wanted. And it was a trove of incriminating evidence.
This type of cognition is like the symbolic racist who is always saying “I am not a racist.”
Lots of them do the same thing this psychopath did – use camouflage to cover up their real persona.
And like Sterling and the Penn State case, the culture allows it to go on for way too long.
J.T. – “a huge challenge for the defense”
Yes it does, but with their usual dishonesty, trivializing, blaming the victims, suppression of evidence, etc., etc. he should be back out there continuing his sick crimes in no time thanks to a “Great Criminal Lawyer”!
Right O.J.???
What is his political party affiliation?
Well, he has his own patron saint to pray to now…St. John Paul II, the protector of pedophiles.
Why does the punishment seem to be lighter for politicians? With their knowledge of the law and stature, shouldn’t the opposite be true?
Whenever one doth protest too much, most people recognize that the protester is attacking that which he feels most guilty about in his own behavior.
It all started in Maine.
Issac, I too have pondered about some future treatment like the brain surgery you speak of to treat pedophiles. Sadly that is probably far in the future, while today these sick disgusting people are out amongst our children and grandchildren and some seem to be upstanding respected citizens in all other aspects. To be the family of one of these convicted and merely even accused pedophiles must be incredibly difficult, the shame probably overwhelming. I’d move away and change my name and my children’s names in that case.
Then he should get 12 to life.
This has nothing to do with politics. There are a lot of wires criss crossing, transmitting emotions having to do with love. The Greeks have four types of love. This mutt has another. The wires in his head that transmit emotions having to do with love are not properly installed. He is not working well enough to function in society. He should never ever be allowed back into society. This sort of illness or whatever one wishes it to be called, can not be repaired. Regardless of whether he is to punished or set out as an example, he cannot be allowed to be anywhere but in an institution, prison, or wax him.
Perhaps there is brain surgery that can fix him. Perhaps he can be a benefit to society as a test case.
Wrong thread, need some coffee.
Now, roosters can be a real problem. I had to interview a farmer on a case. When I spoke to him on the phone to schedule the interview he said, “Honk when you get here and I’ll put Rocky in his pen. He’s a nasty bird.” When I got to his house a few days later I forgot about Rocky. I took a few steps toward the house and Rocky attacked. I jumped up on the hood of my car and being 220 lbs. put a dent in it. The farmer came out laughing and corralled Rocky. There was no litigation.
Nick is correct. The name of the game is “Name that Party!” And i also agree that both parties have enough to be ashamed of these days…
Darren, I was part of a pron investigation one time and it wasn’t even children (though my job was to find evidence of children). It is an experience I never want to repeat. I have to believe it would be a 1000 times worse if I had found children.
It is nice knowing his email address though since I can fake a few emails to appear to be coming from some people I’d like to see punished. But that would be wrong.
I and a couple others have observed that if the story in MSM is about crimes or other disgraceful behavior of a politician, and there is not an ‘R’ for Republican right after their name, then they are a Democrat. I am saddened to see that tradition here on this post. It’s not a big deal. I’m an independent. Both parties have an equal number of crooks, perverts, hypocrites, etc. But, from an objective viewpoint, this always having the ‘R’ and hardly ever having the ‘D’ sticks out. It’s the PI in me that causes me to see details. Although, any objective person also sees it. This guy is man who never should have any contact w/ children for the rest of his life. There are Rep. just as bad.
“For health reasons” = “If I stick around here someone’s going to beat the sh!t out of me.”
Let’s hope he wrote capital punishment into his child porn bill.
If the allegations are proven:
What a prevert! Especially after all the work to sponsor bills further enhancing the law against child pr0n. I’d pay money to be the lead investigator in this case. The two types of crooks I could not stand were child molesters and the other corrupt officials. Having both? I’d consider it a mission from God and an extreme pleasure to put this guy in prison. I’d write a case so air tight, he’d be in more trouble than he could realize.
Reblogged this on Reality Check and commented:
this guy should die