Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Child Molester Who Worked for Dana Rohrabacher, by R. Scott Moxley, Orange County Weekly, April 22, 2009

Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Child Molester Who Worked for Dana Rohrabacher?

By R. Scott Moxley
Orange County Weekly
April 22, 2009

http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/crime-sex/cruel-and-unusual-punishment-f/

At least twice a month, someone asks me: Where is Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, the Orange County conservative activist who worked for years as a Washington, D.C. aide to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) and is now a convicted serial child molester?

Answer: McFarland, California.

Singing & Dancing in Prison?

Thanks to the fondness California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has for the private prison industry (which showers his campaigns with large contributions), Nielsen is serving his three-year sentence not in a state-run hell hole but at the far less stressful, privately-run Golden State Community Correctional Facility.

The facility, located about 25 miles north of Bakersfield, is a place inmates can enjoy. According to a March 2008 Sacramento Bee article, Golden State offers a "relaxed atmosphere," taxpayer-funded satellite television access, indoor and outdoor recreational areas, a library and "comfortable" bunk beds in a college dorm-style setting.

"Right here is love compared to [state prison]," one veteran inmate told the Bee. "Here, you get all the football games, you get movies every day. It's real easy to do your time here. You don't have to worry about nothing . . ."

Nielsen--a 38-year-old graduate of USC law school, a close pal of OC Republican Party boss Scott Baugh, a onetime intern for District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and the son of a former Republican mayor of Fountain Valley--worked his way up rabidly conservative Christian political circles while secretly boning up on his pedophilia practices. His victims included an eighth-grade middle school Virginia boy (sexually abused for three years while Nielsen worked under Rohrabacher) as well as a ninth-grade Westminster, California boy. Before he finally pleaded guilty last year, the child porn collector and his defense lawyer, Paul S. Meyer, ruthlessly attacked the victims as mentally disturbed liars and the Weekly's dogged coverage of the crimes--which went unpunished for more than a decade--as left-wing bias.