From the San Francisco Chronicle. (H/T Robert S. McCain via First Street Journal)

Excerpt:

Veteran gay rights advocate and former San Francisco Human Rights Commission staffer Larry Brinkin pleaded guilty Tuesday to possessing child pornography.

Brinkin, 67, changed his plea in a deal with the district attorney’s office that will result in a sentencing recommendation of six months in county jail, six months of home detention, five years of probation and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

Brinkin, who worked as a senior contract compliance officer with the rights commission until his 2010 retirement, was arrested in June 2012. Authorities said e-mail attachments were found on his America Online subscriber’s account that contained images of toddlers engaged in sex acts with men.

Prosecutors originally charged him with six felony counts of possessing and distributing child pornography, but dropped all but one felony count of possession as part of the plea bargain.

Brinkin must undergo sex offender therapy and is banned from working with kids, contacting a juvenile without parental consent, and living with someone responsible for a child without disclosing his offender status.

During his 22-year tenure at the rights commission, Brinkin helped craft the city’s Equal Benefits Ordinance, which became a national model for workplace equality for gays and lesbians. When he retired, the Board of Supervisors declared the week of Feb. 1, 2010, as Larry Brinkin Week.

Brinkin, who appeared in court with his husband, has been out on $240,000 bail since September 2012. He is scheduled to return for sentencing on March 5, and to surrender into custody at a later date.

He’s going to keep his pension, though:

Knox said he did not believe Brinkin’s city pension would be affected by the plea because his conviction doesn’t fall under “moral turpitude.” Under Proposition C, approved by voters in 2008, a city employee convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude – usually theft, fraud or a breach of the public trust – cannot collect employer-funded retirement benefits.

This is the public sector after all.

Previously, I blogged about a case of two gay men who had adopted a boy from Russia for the purpose of creating child pornography using him. I’m not sure if this is the Australian connection mentioned in the article, but it would make sense. The trouble we have today is that we are so interested in talking about love, love, love, that we have no will to say anything to protect children. When it comes to the selfishness of adults, anything goes, whether it be divorce, single motherhood or anything. We just don’t care about kids, and we mask our indifference by talking about “love” and “not judging”. It’s very important to understand that there are real victims from all of this “love” and “not judging”, and it’s not as benign as it looks on the surface.

Other cases

The NY Daily News reports on another similar case, and links to CBS News and the Hartford Courant.

Excerpt:

The case of a same-sex Connecticut couple accused of repeatedly raping and abusing two of their nine adopted boys is headed for trial.

Married couple George Harasz and Douglas Wirth of Glastonbury were supposed to be sentenced Friday in Hartford Superior Court under a plea deal, but instead withdrew from their agreement with prosecutors. The men had already pleaded no contest in January to one felony count each of risk of injury to a minor — a reduction from even more serious charges related to sexual assault.

[…]Harasz and Wirth adopted nine children — three sets of male siblings — beginning in 2000, and ran a home-based dog breeding business called The Puppy Guy.

The couple was arrested in November 2011 following a police and state investigation of sex-abuse allegations. The children were removed from the home.

Police said two boys, ages 5 and 15, accused Harasz of sexually assaulting them. Harasz was initially facing first-degree sexual assault and other charges, while Wirth had been charged with third-degree sexual assault of the 15-year-old boy.

Their arrest warrants claimed the couple not only sexually and physically abused the children, but also forced them to sleep in closets.

[…]One of the victims who spoke during the court hearing said sexual assault began when he was 6.

“They took turns raping me over and over,” he said.

Now, a lot of these rape accusations turn out to be false, so we don’t really know if anyone is guilty until the trial concludes. But I’ve posted before about other trials that did conclude, so that you know that these things are in fact happening. I had blogged previously about the Duke University official who was offering his 5-year-old adopted son for sex on the Internet, not to mention the famous Jerry Sandusky case and the case where the head of a gay youth organization was running a child sex ring.

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