Eastern Kentucky Prosecutors aren’t just looking to put Joseph Robert Leitner in prison, they are trying to take his house as well.

“Leitner, 62, pleaded guilty last week to charges that he possessed more than 30,000 images of child pornography, and he agreed to give up his home in the Chevy Chase subdivision of Lexington, court records show. A copy of the plea agreement is here.”

“Leitner, who was indicted last year, has been held in custody since October 2008. He pleaded guilty to one count of downloading child pornography in a case bolstered by images and computers taken from his home last year. Leitner faces between five and 20 years in prison. Sentencing is scheduled for October. His lawyer, Jeffrey Darling, was not immediately reached for comment on Monday.”

This is the first time Eastern Kentucky prosecutors have seized a home in a child pornography case. The forfeiture of property usually happens in large drug offenses.

At first I was kind of wondering why they would go after the mans house but after they explained it, I feel it is justified.

“He used his house as a protective shield to allow his criminal activity to go undetected,” said Kyle Edelen, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors, he said, based the forfeiture decision on the number of images and the frequency of the downloads.”

“We’re taking the war on child exploitation very seriously and we’re making it very personal. None of your property is safe if you use it to exploit children — you can even lose your home,” said then then-U.S. Attorney Richard Roper.”

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It’s the first ruling of it’s kind.

On Monday, a Senior U.S. District Judge ordered Alan Hesketh, a resident of Stonington, Connecticut and vice president of New York-based Pfizer Inc., the world’s biggest drugmaker, to pay about $200,000 in restitution to a woman who was photographed being sexually abused when she was a child.

Judge Warren W. Eginton said his ruling was the first in a criminal case in which someone convicted of possessing illegal images - but not creating them - is required to pay restitution.

“Authorities said that from June 2006 to May 2007, Hesketh used the Internet to exchange hundreds of images of child pornography and to engage in online “chats” about the sexual molestation of children. Prosecutors said many of the images showed minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct with adults and with other minors.”

Hesketh, who is a British citizen, was sentenced in October to 78 months in prison for possessing and distributing nearly 2,000 photographs of child pornography.

Hesketh was fired from his job in New London as Pfizer’s vice president and global patent director after his arrest in March 2008. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials caught him at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.

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Two Seattle-area high school cheerleaders were suspended from the squad after nude photographs of them circulated via text message, and now their parents are suing the school district.

“The two teens were suspended from the squad - one for 30 days and one for the entire year - after school officials learned of the photos in August.”

“The lawsuits, filed on Nov. 17, say the district violated the girls’ due process rights. The families allege it was unnecessary for school officials to share the photos with other staff members, and claim they were negligent in failing to report the matter to police as a potential case of child pornography.”

The attorney representing the families is claiming that it was unfair to punish the two cheerleaders but not the other students who received or forwarded the photos around the campus.

“There should have been some punishment meted out to those who were in possession of the photos… It seems like the girls are getting the brunt of it.”

Apparently the girls are saying that they took the pictures and sent them to their then-boyfriends, and thought they had been deleted…. but, they ended up in the hands of members of the football team…

Big surprise huh.

Of the pictures that surfaced, one was supposedly taken over three years ago, and the other, was taken in June.

“Their lawyer says he wants the disciplinary action expunged from the girls’ school records, the suspensions waved and an apology issued by the school”

“This is frivolous,” Northshore School District attorney Mike Patterson said. “It should never have gone to court and they (the families suing) should recognize that what happened here was created by their own doing.”

Be careful ladies. Even when you don’t have any repurcussions right away, you never know when something from your past can come up and bite you in the behind a’la Miss Nevada Katie Rees. Use your Head.

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