Shades of Roman Polanski

So it’s not just Hollywood.

It seems that a celebrated Provincetown resident is going to jail for child pornography. And P-Town residents are up in arms about it.

John Perry Ryan is scheduled to be sentenced in Braintree, VT, on Monday on three counts of transporting child pornography. In June of last year he plea bargained six counts down to three, while admitting guilt to emailing a variety of explicit child porn photos to several people.

The Cape Cod Times reports:

Prosecutors want Ryan to go to prison for 10 years and pay fines, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, according to court records. Prosecutors called him a “prolific” collector and trader of child pornography on whose home computer were found 24,000 images and nearly 150 videos. [emphasis mine] Ryan traded the images with the user name of “baitor.” The vast majority of the images and videos depict [if you really want to know go read the entire story, but I won’t publish it here], the records indicated…

“Defendant is an untreated sex offender,” said U.S. Attorney Tristram J. Coffin in court records. “He has minimized his conduct and offered little to no remorse for his crime.”

And yet. Letters of support for Ryan are pouring in from Provincetown: According to his supporters, he is “…a person who has dedicated his adult life to improving the lot of the least fortunate,”a man who is “fighting for people who had no voice,” and someone who “took extraordinary care of his mother.”

Please. That’s what Roman Polanski’s pals said, too. About Ryan, a supporter offered:

“I think the law in this area is a mess,” Wunsch said yesterday. “He may have done something wrong. But I don’t think this man would hurt anyone, let alone a child. Even if technically he violated the law, I think it’s the biggest waste of taxpayer money to imprison someone like this.”

Sounds suspiciously like Whoopi Goldberg’s ridiculous defense of Polanski, that “it wasn’t rape rape.”

What is the matter with these people? John Perry Ryan admitted to emailing explicit photos. He had over 20,000 child porn images and 150 videos on his home computer. I don’t care if he took care of his mother. This scumbag belongs in jail for a long long time.

I’d like to make sure that the notoriously bleeding heart state of Vermont hands down an appropriate sentence to Mr. Ryan instead of a slap on the wrist, which is what his supporters are clamoring for. Please make everyone aware of this story–let’s not allow a kiddie porn collector and distributor get away with it.

Stoutcat