Crime
Former Boxer aide pleads guilty to child porn possession
By: Freeman Klopott
Examiner Staff Writer
January 29, 2009
A former high-level aide to Calif. Sen. Barbara Boxer pleaded guilty Thursday to possessing child pornography and faces up to 20 years in prison.
Jeff P. Rosato, 32, of Arlington, worked for the three-term Democrat from February 2005 through August 2007, rising from legislative assistant to senior policy adviser. In October 2007, Rosato moved to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, for which Boxer is chairwoman. He was fired from his committee post as senior policy adviser in November after Boxer learned of the charges.
In Alexandria’s U.S. District Court on Thursday, Rosato’s attorney, Patrick Anderson, argued Rosato should remain out of jail until he’s sentenced May 1.
Rosato told the judge he suffers from depression, anxiety and night terror syndrome. Anderson said his client had been in therapy and would benefit from being able to meet with his doctor before being sentenced.
“This is a sad situation,” Anderson told Judge T.S. Ellis III. “[Rosato] was sexually molested as a child and he never dealt with that ... his addiction got the best of him.”
But Ellis concluded that Anderson’s arguments did not meet the standards for an exception to a law requiring a person convicted of child pornography possession to begin serving prison time immediately. Rosato left the courtroom in the custody of U.S. Marshals.
Anderson declined to comment after the hearing.
Rosato was charged in November, months after FBI agents discovered thousands of child pornographic images on his computer. U.S. Attorney Andrew McCormack said Thursday that many of the images matched pictures in a national database of missing children.
Investigators were led to Rosato after linking his IP address to a Google Hello user name that had received hundreds of child pornographic images from a known porn distributor in February 2007, court documents said.
The unnamed distributor’s computer was seized in January 2008, and Rosato’s user name was among several who had been receiving the pornographic files, the statement said.
On Thursday, Rosato, the collar of his red shirt peeking out above his blue sweater, admitted calmly to the crime. “Yes, your honor. I, simply put, received and possessed images of minors depicted in child pornography.”
Rosato faces a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years.
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