ROCHESTER (NY)
Democrat & Chronicle
Gary Craig
Staff writer
(March 20, 2005) — The photos found on Henry James Ludington’s computer at his workplace — a Wayne County BOCES school building — were disturbing and graphic.
They showed children, some apparently as young as 6, being used as sexual playthings by adult men.
The videos were equally lurid, including a minutelong clip depicting a boy and girl, both around 10 years old, engaging in a sexual act.
Yet when Ludington appeared in court for sentencing this month, his family, friends and fellow church-goers packed the courtroom in a show of support. In letters to U.S. District Judge Charles Siragusa, they spoke of Ludington’s sterling character, trying to assure the judge that Ludington was not a man who would abuse a child.
In a statement, Ludington, a former regional math coordinator at the Wayne-Finger Lakes Board of Cooperative Educational Services, who was sentenced to seven years and three months in prison, acknowledged his taste for child pornography, but stressed that he would never hurt a kid.
Would he?
That’s the question that for now is unanswered — but it’s also a question confronting therapists, authorities and even parents who want to know how to protect their children. Earlier this month a local priest, the Rev. Michael Volino, was accused of possessing child pornography. His lawyer, echoing the claims of Ludington, says Volino has never abused a child, nor would he ever do so.
But retired FBI crime profiler Gregg McCrary is skeptical of such claims: “A lot of times they may be truthful when they say they’ve looked at it, they like the pictures, they find it erotic and they wouldn’t act on it.
“But these guys lie.”