Las Vegas man gets 24-year sentence in child porn case

A Las Vegas man was slapped with a 24-year prison sentence today for receiving and possessing child pornography despite his attorney’s argument that the string of images appeared on his computer without solicitation.

While that might be true, 47-year-old Richard Chase did nothing to rid himself of the illegal content, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Koppe. Instead, he stored them to an encrypted disk where the images could only be accessed by passwords.

One password was the name of the child in one video and the other was the name of a boy he molested, Koppe said.

Chase, who in February pleaded guilty to receipt of child pornography and travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, told U.S. District Judge Phillip Pro he looked at the images and later felt “disgusted” with himself.

“I’m not the monster I’m perceived to be,” Chase told Pro before receiving the 24-year, five-month sentence to which both he and the government agreed. “I’m crushed and tormented by the pain I’ve caused.”

The teen Chase molested appeared in court and told Pro how the encounters with Chase have haunted him. The boy, a close family friend who was 14 years old at the time the crimes were committed, is now 18.

He said he struggles to sleep, keeps his bedroom door locked and has had difficulty maintaining a relationship with his girlfriend.

“Every time I’d hug her or kiss her, it felt wrong to me,” he said.

Koppe also read a letter from a teenager who appears in videos found in Chase’s possession. The girl, who is now 17, said she was 10 or 11 when her biological father molested her. The encounters escalated and reached a point where he began using a videotape.

Fear and shame kept the teen from coming forward until 2005, when she finally reported her father’s abuse. Her father fled before he could be prosecuted. She said she never imagined those videos would be sent to computers around the world.

The girl said she was contacted by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after a child pornography special aired on the television program America’s Most Wanted. The center wanted her to look at some videos it received.

“I thought, 'No, it couldn’t be me,’ ” the teen wrote in a letter to Pro. “It was. It made me feel like I was raped by each and every one of them (computer users who viewed the images).”

Koppe emphasized that the dissemination of child pornography images can be just as bad as the initial act because it floats around the cyber world for years.

“It never goes away,” Koppe said.

Contact reporter Adrienne Packer at apacker@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710.