Fox News producer gets 10 years for child porn
By: Hayley Peterson
Examiner Staff
July 22, 2009
A Fox News Channel producer was sentenced Tuesday to 10 years in prison on federal child pornography charges.
Aaron Bruns, 29, was arrested in February after authorities searched his Dupont Circle-area apartment and found his computer full of child porn. In May, Bruns pleaded guilty to the charges and was facing up to eight years in prison, according to federal guidelines, documents said. But federal Judge James Robertson on Tuesday pushed his sentence to 10 years, citing a former conviction on similar charges while Bruns was in college.
Bruns was the second Washington journalist to be sentenced for possession of child pornography in less than a week. Former National Public Radio science editor David Malakoff, also facing six to eight years, was spared prison time partially because U.S. District Judge Ellen Huvelle said he had been raped as a 9-year-old in Rock Creek Park. Malakoff got five years of probation, a $5,000 fine and 600 hours of community service, and is required to register as a sex offender for 25 years.
Bruns was not so lucky.
In 1999, Bruns dropped out of the University of Michigan after the police discovered a student was using the school's server to download and share child pornography. Detectives seized Bruns' computer from his dorm room and found thousands of pornographic images stored on it, according to the school newspaper. Bruns was arrested and pleaded guilty to charges of distributing child pornography, but he served only three years of probation because of his age, according to court documents.
This time, Bruns' laptop contained hundreds of images and at least five movie files depicting children under the age of 10 being sexually abused by men and women, according to police documents. Images show the children, some as young as 3, being tied up and raped, court filings said. A few nude photos of himself were also in the evidence.
Police targeted Bruns after investigators found he was offering to share child pornography over a popular file-sharing network. Bruns worked out of Fox News' Washington bureau before his conviction. He followed candidates on the campaign trail, such as then-Sen. Hillary Clinton during her run for the Democratic nomination, and he most recently covered Vice President Joseph Biden's farewell speech to the Senate.
