Ex-pastor pleads guilty in porn case

The former pastor and his attorneys rose for arraignment. The clerk read the amended charge aloud — possession of child pornography.

The defendant pleaded not guilty, but then said he had misunderstood the instructions. So Gregory Briehl entered his plea again.

“I plead guilty, your honor,” Briehl said.

Briehl, 55, entered an Alford plea Wednesday to possession of child pornography as part of a plea agreement in Albemarle County Circuit Court. Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. accepted the agreement “with reluctance” and sentenced Briehl to five years in prison, all suspended on condition of good behavior.

An Alford plea means that Briehl maintains his innocence while acknowledging that the prosecution has enough evidence to convict him.

The judge also sentenced Briehl to a year of supervised probation and ordered that the computers involved in this case be forfeited.

Jon R. Zug, assistant commonwealth’s attorney, agreed not to prosecute the remaining 14 counts of possession of child pornography.

Zug said in court that the felony conviction will cause Briehl’s counseling license to be revoked. The prosecutor said he received phone calls from Briehl’s former clients after he was accused of having child pornography.

“They felt betrayed,” Zug said. “They felt that they went to this man and he was charged with this type of thing and it bothered them.”

Both Zug and defense attorney Rhonda Quagliana said in court that they thought the plea agreement was a fair resolution. Zug said outside of court that he was not happy with the agreement, but it was the only way to guarantee that Briehl’s counseling license was revoked.

The case came to light in May 2006 after Briehl’s former wife found cameras and videos in their Earlysville home. Zug said in court that the ex-wife told police about the cameras as well as some images on Briehl’s computer. Authorities executed a search warrant at the house that month and found video recordings of guests and pictures on a hard drive.

Briehl was convicted of unlawful filming in September 2006 and sentenced to 60 days in jail, according to court records. He was scheduled for a two-day jury trial on the child pornography charges to start next week.

Birthdays

The resolution of Briehl’s case comes after more than three years of litigation, during which time both sides tried to determine the age of the females depicted in the images found on Briehl’s computer.

“We realize this case would have come down to a contest among experts,” Zug said in court. “ … Age was a critical factor.”

Dr. Nancy McLaren, the medical director of the University of Virginia’s Teen Health Center, testified during a hearing in March 2008 that she thought most of the females were between 12 years old and 16 years old based on their physical development.

“Our experts could say there’s nothing inconsistent with them being adults,” Quagliana said in court.

Both Zug and Quagliana spent time trying to track down the origin of the images in hopes of finding information about the models. Under Title 18, section 2257 of the U.S. Code, pornography Web sites must maintain records on each performer. That information must include the model’s legal name, stage names and age.

Authorities tracked the images on Briehl’s computer to an Australian Web site. Zug has said he contacted the Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Center for information on the Web site, but he was unable to get into contact with site personnel.

A site employee wrote an e-mail, which was filed in court records earlier this year, to Briehl’s attorneys that said the site’s visitors submit pictures to the site. The employee said the visitors must keep section 2257 information on the models under the site’s terms and conditions.

Changes

Zug was assigned Briehl’s case not long after he joined the county’s Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney. Now that he has seen more graphic images while dealing with other child pornography cases, the prosecutor said he would call the images in Briehl’s case “tame” by comparison. The images didn’t show anyone in a sexual act.

“There was no one unwittingly having [her] photograph being taken,” Zug said in court. “One person held a camera up in front of a mirror.”

As a result of prosecuting Briehl’s case, Zug said his office is no longer prosecuting child pornography cases unless the people in the images are clearly prepubescent, newly pubescent or are a match for known images of child pornography in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database. Zug said the database didn’t find matches for the pictures in Briehl’s case.

Briehl and his attorneys declined to talk after court was over, instead handing out a prepared memorandum. The statement said it has always been the defense’s position that the females in the pictures were at least 18 years old. Briehl said in the statement that he was appreciative of his supporters and expressed regret for “conduct that has been hurtful and offensive.”

Before Peatross pronounced sentence, Briehl chose to say something on his behalf.

“I’m sorry for the time I’ve used in this court, your honor,” Briehl said.