Four Sent to Prison For Child Porn
By Scott E. Williams
Originally published in The Daily News, September 14, 2002
DICKINSON — A child pornography case that began last year in Dickinson ended Friday when a federal judge sentenced four men to prison.
The four, who were part of a nonprofit group that searched for missing and endangered children, attended parties where young teens were given drugs and photographed performing sexual acts.
U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Kent sentenced Thomas McBarron to 15 years and eight months in prison, on charges of conspiracy to sexually exploit a child and possession of child pornography. A federal jury convicted him on those charges in May.
His former compatriots, Jason Krieg, Henry Gerdes and Greg Volkmann, originally faced similar charges, but all agreed to plead guilty to possession of child pornography and testify against McBarron. In return, the U.S. Attorney s Office dropped the other charges against them. Kent sentenced each of them to five years in prison.
McBarron was chief of Stattsar, a volunteer group aimed at helping to locate missing kids and runaways in the Houston-Galveston area. The other three men were members of the organization.
He was also part of a ring that paid boys and girls to perform sexual acts that were recorded for placement on a Web site that McBarron and four others were in the process of organizing when the group caught investigators attention.
Krieg, who had admitted being one of the main recruiters of underage performers for the group, wept as he apologized to the court and to his victims, and expressed hope for a lighter sentence.
My 2-year-old daughter asked me to take her to McDonalds, he said, voice cracking. I had no words to tell her why I could not. Kent said he believed the men were genuinely contrite, but told Krieg his apology was too little, too late.
It would have been nice if you'd had even a fraction of these feelings while you were trolling around Houston for young girls in crisis situations to take part in this abhorrent pornography, the judge told Krieg.
Kent said that while his court always considered impact of sentences on defendant's families, he also felt the need to send a message that this conduct is so egregious and that it cannot be tolerated in our society.
Teens recruited by the group were 15 and 16 years old. One recording depicted a nude young girl performing a sexual act on herself while reciting passages from the Bible. Testimony during McBarron s trial revealed that the group plied the girl with drugs more than once. On one occasion, she overdosed and had to have her stomach pumped at a hospital.
Dickinson police began investigating into the ring after a tip from a parent of one of the victims friends last summer. Police turned the case over to the FBI shortly thereafter.
Justin Grimm, a fifth participant in the child pornography ring, was sentenced last week to 54 months in prison. He had also pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography.
