The Baltimore County girls gymnastics coach caught with more than 800 VHS tapes packed with child pornography and 21 little pairs of little girls? underwear in his Edgewood bedroom admitted Thursday he?s got a problem.
“I?ve very deeply sorry for what I did,” said Patrick Bogan, 41, who pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Baltimore to possession of child pornography. “I?m very, very sorry to my friends, my family and the community for putting them through this whole ordeal. I went out on my own and sought counseling and therapy.”
Bogan told Judge William Nickerson that he has sought counseling for what he knows is an “addiction.”
Nickerson sentenced Bogan, who coached hundreds of children at Baltimore County Gymnastics in White Marsh, to more than six years ? 78 months ? in federal prison and ordered him to register as a sex offender for a period of 15 years. The judge also disallowed him from having any future job in which he is in routine contact with children.
“There is no history of violence ? with a child ? or of any kind,” Nickerson said in handing down the sentence. “There is no attempt to produce or sell the images and never an attempt to arrange a meeting or engage in a sex act.”
Bogan?s attorney Booth Ripke said, “He gets it. He understands the severity of this.”
Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein called Bogan?s child pornography collection “remarkably large” and said it was “important that we act quickly” because Bogan?s job required him to be in close contact with children.
FBI agents discovered Bogan, who is single, while conducting a nationwide probe into a sophisticated Internet message board that contained child pornography.
On March 2, agents searched Bogan?s home and recovered five cabinets containing videotapes of child pornography. They eventually recovered more than 800 videotapes, each one filled with child pornography; a well-organized computer hard drive containing “countless” images of child pornography; and 21 pairs of girls? underpants in Bogan?s bedroom, agents said.
Bogan collected these panties from a lost and found over a period of two years, prosecutors said.
