A flood of letters from admirers of former National Public Radio editor and convicted sex offender David Malakoff have poured into a D.C. federal court on behalf of the award-winning journalist, saying his rape as a child should earn him leniency.
Malakoff, 46, faces more than eight years in prison on a felony child pornography possession charge. He is set to be sentenced Thursday.
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More than 100 people wrote to D.C. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle vouching for Malakoff’s character. Friends argued that Malakoff was sexually assaulted at about age 9 and would not hurt anyone. A psychologist wrote that Malakoff would not be in the predicament had he not been raped by a stranger nearly 40 years ago.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, have filed written testimony from a Washington state teenager who was bound and raped by her father as a young child and whose videos Malakoff downloaded to his NPR laptop computer last year. She has asked that her statement be read in court.
The hundreds of pages of documents filed by prosecutors and defense attorneys demonstrate the ramifications of child sex abuse and child pornography.
Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte asked Huvelle to spare Malakoff from a harsh sentence. In a three-page letter, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter said Malakoff was a good man who kept secret his own rape for most of his life.
“He is an extraordinary soul. Tormented, yes,” Schulte wrote. “But throughout the darkness, he radiates goodness. … He does not deserve to be punished so severely a second time.”
Defense attorneys provided a letter that Malakoff wrote in 1996 to a childhood friend who Malakoff believed witnessed his rape. Malakoff said he remembered playing in Rock Creek Park with friends under the Taft Bridge when a strange man showed up and pulled him into the woods.
The former neighbor wrote back that he recalled that the man abducted another boy, not Malakoff.
“I can still hear the scream that followed his being led into the woods,” the friend wrote. “I can still feel the confusion and fear the rest of us had as we looked on, wondering whether we should run for it or risk being punished by our captor.”
The Washington state teen appeared as a 9-year-old in the images of young children that Malakoff pulled from the Internet. She is now 19.
“I wish I could grow out of the pain. I wish it could fade away with age, but just like those images are out there forever, those memories will always be with me,” she wrote. “I pray that seeing justice done will bring me some closure.”
Editor’s note: The original version of this story incorrectly quoted from the Malakof letter. It did not reference the Calvert Bridge but rather the Taft Bridge. We regret the error.
