Dr. Steve Taylor pleaded guilty in April to 23 counts of attempted possession of child pornography.

In at least a half-dozen letters, people and friends of people living with emotional scars of sexual abuse have written St. Tammany Parish District Attorney Walter Reed or state Judge Peter Garcia urging some kind of relief in the case of Dr. Steve Taylor.

And this is the second round of unusual letters on Taylor's behalf.

In 2009, before his conviction, national figures in the sexual abuse movement -- such as journalist Jason Berry and Barbara Blaine, the national founder of SNAP, or Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests -- wrote on Taylor's behalf to the Louisiana State Board of Medical Examiners, which was then considering whether to lift Taylor's medical license.

Neither asserted Taylor's innocence -- the criminal case's resolution was still to come -- but both asked the licensing board to consider Taylor's humanitarian work and professional contributions to victims of childhood sexual abuse.

The latest letters show that some correspondents still hold Taylor in high regard, even after his April 12 guilty plea to 23 counts of attempted possession of child pornography.

Some ask for attention to several chronic illnesses as Taylor, 72, begins a two-year sentence.

They say Taylor, a psychiatrist with a long history of community health work, counseled them personally and worked with them in the public sector as they sought legal reforms after the 2002 Catholic clerical sex-abuse scandal. Taylor appears with them in a group photo with Gov. Kathleen Blanco after she signed legislation requiring clergy to report suspected child abuse.

And having been briefed on the back story of his case by his wife and most ardent supporter, Lyn Taylor, the founder of the Louisiana chapter of SNAP, several suggest that Taylor's conviction -- even though he pleaded guilty -- is a miscarriage of justice.

There is also, of course, a counter view.

Reed's office offered no comment on Taylor's case except to say it was properly handled.

And Taylor's own defense lawyer, Ralph Whalen, said he believes Reed extended Taylor a significant break by allowing him to plead to a lesser charge, attempted possession of child pornography, and taking the plea to Garcia without requesting prison time at all.

Given the revulsion child pornography provokes and the conservative ethos of suburban St. Tammany, Whalen said Reed might easily have taken a harder line.

"In the end I believe the DA tried to fashion a fair resolution taking into account the good work Steve Taylor has done for years and the very minimal nature, relatively speaking, of the violation," Whalen said.

Sexually explicit images found on laptop

The case began when sheriff's deputies, acting on a tip, raided Taylor's Covington home and office in April 2008. They seized a laptop computer and booked him on possession of child pornography found on its hard drive.

His arrest was a shock. Taylor was by then well-known in the north shore public health community. He had spent 25 years on the faculty at LSU Medical Center, worked in prison ministry and hospice care and, introduced by his wife -- herself a sexual abuse survivor -- become a quiet but regular presence at public and private meetings of clerical sexual abuse victims around New Orleans.

Taylor had been scheduled to receive a community award for his hospice work a week after the arrest. The award was canceled.

"When the charges were first made, my initial react was visceral, in my gut," said Mona Villarrubia, one of those who has written on his behalf.

"But when I gave myself time to think, I knew this was not something that could be true of this man.

"However those pictures got there, or whatever, I did not see him as a predator or a threat to children.

"I have pretty good radar," said Villarrubia, having experienced childhood sex abuse herself, "and he never set it off."

Taylor apparently triggered the investigation himself when he asked his computer consultant to rid his laptop of "offensive material" he found there, Lyn Taylor said. In time the Sheriff's Office was informed, and Taylor's Covington home and office were raided.

In legal limbo

Weeks passed after his arrest.

Weeks became months. And months became years. Reed made no move to bring the case to court.

A year and a half after the arrest, Taylor, in legal limbo and facing financial ruin, applied to the medical board to recover his license to practice.

"I thought if the DA had a case, they would have moved against him long time ago," said Berry, reflecting on his reasons for writing the medical board on Taylor's behalf.

"Instead, they're being drained of their assets. He's looking for a chance to get back to work. So I wrote a letter. I'd do it again."

License to practice returned

One of the few undisputed facts in the Taylor case is that there was, in fact, some offensive material involving children on Taylor's computer and that Taylor himself pointed it out for removal.

Lyn Taylor told stunned friends they suspected the images were maliciously planted, perhaps by their unidentified computer consultant, whom they had earlier given routine, remote access to the machine.

But as part of a multiday psychiatric evaluation in Atlanta ordered by the state medical board, Taylor told an examining psychiatrist at first that he did not download the images, then that he did, but only as a matter of clinical interest. Later, at his hearing in Louisiana, he said he had no recollection of having made that admission in Atlanta.

In its ruling, the state medical board found that "no one, including (the Atlanta psychiatrist) testified that Dr. Taylor was a pedophile."

As to Taylor's conflicting stories, the Louisiana examiners already knew from their records that Taylor, by virtue of two previous brain traumas, was prone to confusion and poor judgment when stressed or after more than a half-day's work. They regarded Taylor's admission in Atlanta as unreliable. For that and other reasons, they returned his license to practice under several strict conditions.

"We do not believe that the evidence preponderates to the effect that Dr. Taylor intentionally downloaded child pornography, and we so find," the ruling says.

Prison sentence

Whalen and Lyn Taylor confirmed they hired their own expert to examine the suspect laptop. In an interview, Whalen said there was much he could not say without breaching client confidentiality, but he noted that Taylor's decision to take Reed's relatively lenient no-prison, lesser-charge offer followed the defense's own forensic examination.

However, Garcia, the judge, was not a party to the deal. He was free to impose prison, which he did -- in a hearing held three years almost to the day after Taylor's arrest.

After the plea, Reed's office pronounced itself satisfied. Spokesman Rick Wood explained that prosecutors struck the deal because they had concerns about evidence in the case and were unsure a trial verdict would be favorable. He declined to elaborate.

Meantime, many in the abuse victims community were shocked anew.

Lyn Taylor's narrative, widely circulated in the victims community, is that they were poorly represented -- that Taylor was suddenly confronted with a trial date and no legal defense and that he was essentially coerced by circumstance into a guilty plea.

Whalen's take is that Reed stayed his hand an unusually long time to allow them to mount a defense and that in light of the forensic findings, the Taylors weighed the risks of potentially disastrous trial and, in the end, took an attractive deal on a heinous charge -- a break, in the stern law-and-order culture of St. Tammany Parish.

Taylor, meanwhile, remains in the St. Tammany Parish jail, awaiting assignment to some facility in the state prison system.

A website soliciting further support for Taylor has been taken down.