Plea deal spares Albemarle woman in child porn case
An Albemarle County woman has admitted she downloaded child pornography, but she won’t have to register as a sex offender.
Brittney M. Demmer, 28, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Albemarle Circuit Court to 10 counts of possession of child pornography as part of a plea agreement. Judge Thomas H. Wood gave Demmer a 10-year suspended prison sentence, a year of probation and 10 years of good behavior.
Demmer, a mother of two, worked at a daycare facility prior to her arrest. Darby Lowe, deputy commonwealth’s attorney, said in court that Demmer searched the LimeWire file sharing service for the images featuring younger children and looked at them while her husband slept.
“It was like seeing a bad car accident. You just keep looking at it,” Lowe said in court, reading a report detailing police conversations with Demmer.
Authorities with local Internet Cri-mes Against Children units discovered through advanced software that a computer from Dem-mer’s home was downloading the illegal images in April 2009, Lowe said in court. Demmer initially told police that she had downloaded the images accidentally.
Defense attorney Scott Goodman said in court that Demmer was a victim of sexual abuse as a child, which appears to be the reason she viewed the images. Good-man said his client’s mental health evaluations showed that she didn’t have a sexual attraction to children.
Under the plea agreement, Lowe said in court, Demmer won’t face additional charges for other illegal images she is alleged to have downloaded. Lowe said Demmer also won’t have to register as a sex offender because the statute doesn’t call for it in cases where a person only possessed, not distributed, child pornography.
After Demmer’s arrest, Goodman said in court, she was separated from her young children for two weeks while the Albemarle Department of Social Services did an investigation that ultimately didn’t turn up abuse or neglect.
Demmer did not say anything on her behalf.
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Reader Reactions
Hey, What’s UP with This: Contrast the Above Story with the Below Story. Only difference is one is a woman, the other is a man.
OMG.
County man sentenced to over 2 years in jail for child porn
An Albemarle County man who downloaded child pornography will be incarcerated for two more years.
Circuit Judge Cheryl Higgins sentenced Kenneth James Rothwell this morning to two-and-a-half years in prison, three years of supervised release and 40 years of good behavior. Rothwell also will register as a sex offender, undergo sex offender treatment and won’t be allowed to own a computer or have unsupervised contact with a minor.
In court this morning, Rothwell said he moved to the Charlottesville area from St. Louis as part of an agreement after he molested some children to whom he was related. He testified he downloaded Limewire, a file-sharing program, to “see what was on there.” Rothwell said in court he downloaded music files and eventually child pornography.
Rothwell has already served six months in jail.
For more on this story, read Thursday’s edition of The Daily Progress.
I am so shocked by this story.
Not that I want that woman to be personally persecuted. I just want Equal Justice, Equal Protection Under the Law.
We have men in prison all across the nation for 1 or 2 child porn photos..
We have children, teens in prison, branded for LIFE as LIFETIME REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS for this same thing, and yet this woman gets off.
Is the the daughter of the Judge, the District Attorney? The Governor?
What happened to Blind Justice?
Dead on. Compare to the case of Greg Briehl, and the way the County dogged that case for years (despite it NOT being a case of child pornography, in the generally understood perception of ‘child’)... this kind of crime really deserves no mercy, regardless of gender, and prior family history should not be used to mitigate the sentences. How can any judge go light on child porn.
The really sick thing… now that Greg Briehl married into the Graham family (to Ruth), he has moved into his old neighborhood, and is suing his ex for full custody of their children. The beat goes on.
If everything else in the case/article were the same- except the gender- if she were a male of the same age, same work situation, same home environment, same mental health and childhood abuse background, etc.
If this were a guy- there would be jail time and they would make him register as a sex offender- just for the possession. Go search the other progress stories where that was their was only possession- they all had to register as sex offenders.
It’s a double standard and they’re hypocrites. She should have to register.
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