« Story receives international attention | Main | Fears of tsunami child abductions mount »
December 21, 2004
Former Portsmouth Teacher Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography Charges
In a Portsmouth court Monday, a former city school teacher pleaded guilty to 24 counts of child abuse and pornography.
Under a plea agreement, Kelly Karl Bowen will spend 45 years in jail for crimes. He was sentenced to 255 years behind bars, with 210 suspended.
The guilty pleas spare the victims from testifying in court. Prosecutors say Bowen has agreed to help authorities identify all of the victims so they can get proper counseling.
Bowen's alleged crimes date back as far as 2000, and prosecutors said the 24 counts involved 24 separate individuals. The individual charges included forcible sodomy, using an electronic means to procure minors for sexually explicit material, producing sexually explicit material, and possession of child pornography.
Authorities say Bowen, also a former dance instruction, was able to get computer e-mail addresses of children, then posed as a teen girl in Internet chat rooms and was able to get kids to send him nude pictures of themselves. Authorities say he had sex with one of the children. Just how many total children were involved, authorities can't say.
Bowen was arrested June 23rd at this home in the 100 block of Oxford Drive in Portsmouth following an investigation by the Virginia Attorney General, Portsmouth and Gloucester Police.
At that time, he was charged with nine counts of possession of child pornography and one count of computer solicitation of a minor for sexual exploitation. More charges were added later.
According to the state attorney general's office, Bowen is a former teacher in the Portsmouth public school system and at the time of his initial arrest, was employed as an instructional specialist with Portsmouth public schools. Bowen was fired by the school system in August.
Police said in June they became aware of Bowen when a Gloucester police officer - working undercover online to catch sexual predators - came in contact with him in an online chat room June 17. Prosecutors say Bowen used the screen name 'HOTLILFLGURL.'
With additional information obtained through a court order in Gloucester County Circuit Court, the Gloucester County Sheriff's Office obtained a list of additional America Online (AOL) screen names also believed to belong to Bowen:
SEEKELLDAZZLE2
DASTARISOUT
KBSOCIALSTUDIES
HOTLILFLGURL
DOINGYOUWELL
SEXXICHICKNVA
DANCEDYNAMICSVA
HOTTYCHEEERGIRL
NONRATED
NONRATED2
For tips on keeping your children safe while they're online, visit the websites below:
GetNetWise.Org
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
SafeKids.Com
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Posted by Nealus at December 21, 2004 01:18 PM
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
