U.S. Naval Academy Midshipman Michael Pollard Jr.’s “terrible secret” of having a child pornography collection has cost him his Navy career, family’s tradition and possibly future relationships.
“I tried to quit on my own … but I couldn’t go to people in the academy for help, because I was afraid they would prosecute me,” said Pollard, 23, during his court-martial Tuesday at the Washington Navy Yard, where he pleaded guilty to possessing more than 1,000 images of child pornography.
As he stood before a Navy captain acting as judge, Pollard fought back tears and apologized to his parents — his father, a retired Navy master chief — and the academy where he hoped to become a Navy jet pilot.
“He told me, ‘How could a woman love me, or have children with me?’” said Pollard Jr.’s mother, Marjorie.
Investigating officer Capt. Bruce Mackenzie, serving as the lone judge, handed down a six-year prison sentence, but because of a pre-trial agreement with the prosecution, Pollard will only serve five years in a Navy jail in Norfolk, Va.
As a standard rule, his case will automatically be appealed. The convening authority in the case, Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Jeffrey Fowler, can reduce the punishment.
However, the prosecutors, acting on behalf of Fowler, offered Pollard, of Apopka, Fla., a three-year maximum jail sentence if he opted out of an Article 32 hearing, where the evidence against Pollard would be heard to determine if a court-martial would occur, said Pollard’s attorney Larry Burch.
But Pollard moved forward with the hearing, and the sentence was increased to five years, Burch said.
“The sentencing is more for a predator, not a voyeur,” he said.
Pollard also will have to pay back the academy roughly $100,000 for three years of education at the Annapolis academy, which is funded by taxpayers.
He also will have to register as a sex offender wherever he lives, and is now considered a federal felon.
The images he downloaded, starting in 2003 while at the Naval Academy’s prep school in Rhode Island, were mostly of boys engaged in all forms of sex.
