COLLEGE PARK, MD - The former mayor of College Park, Maryland, pleaded guilty last week to 140 child pornography counts, the Washington Post reports. The guilty plea was part of a deal with the Prince George’s County prosecutor’s office and will put him behind bars for 30 years.
Last March, former Mayor Patrick Wojahn, 47, was indicted by a Prince George’s County grand jury charging him with 80 counts of possession with intent to distribute child pornography. Online court records show that a superseding indictment was returned in May on 140 counts.
Wojahn pleaded guilty to all counts of the second indictment—60 counts of distribution of child porn, 40 counts of possession of child porn, and 40 counts of possession of child porn with intent to distribute. That plea occurred on August 2 in Prince George’s County Circuit Court.
Prosecutors said Wojahn’s plea and sentencing are one of the county's most significant for a similar crime.
“Each count represents a victim,” Assistant State’s Attorney Jessica Garth said following the hearing. “Even though he’s not sentenced to jail time for each count per se, he’s still accepting responsibility for each count.” Garth is the chief of the special victims and family violence unit.
Prosecutors say that Wojahn resigned his post just before his arrest and will be eligible for parole after serving roughly seven-and-one-half years, or 25 percent, of his sentence.
Wojahn’s attorney, David Moyse, appeared to downplay the crimes, telling the court that "there were no manufactured images” among the pornographic images Wojahn possessed. In other words, the pornography he pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing was not actually produced by Wojahn.
During the court proceeding, Wojahn stood beside his attorney as the judge read off the more than 100 charges, responding, “Yes, your honor,” afterward.
Wojahn’s arrest was the culmination of a weeks-long investigation after a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reporting a suspicious account on Kik, a mobile messaging app, charging documents revealed. Investigators confirmed that Wojahn uploaded numerous pornographic videos that portrayed young boys with adult men.
When police executed a search warrant at Wojahn’s College Park residence, he admitted the Kik account was his, police said. He also admitted to using a private network when accessing the app. “Furthermore, he advised that he has viewed and possessed files depicting child pornography,” police said.
Garth said in open court that law enforcement officials searched several of Wojahn’s electronic devices, which contained over 1,500 videos and images depicting child porn and an additional 200-plus instances of distribution of child pornography across apps such as Kik and Telegram.
As part of the plea agreement, Wojahn will serve five years of probation following his release and must have no unsupervised contact with children. He also must subject himself to therapy and register with the sex offender registry for 25 years.
“As a former elected official, the College Park community puts its faith and support in him to serve each resident and their best interests. Instead, he let them down in the most disgraceful way,” Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said in a news release. “Our children are both precious and vulnerable, deserving of the utmost protection. The tragedy of them being preyed upon in cases like this cannot be understated.”
College Park is the home of the University of Maryland. Wojahn served as mayor for seven years after serving eight years on the city council before that.
About two months before his arrest, Wojahn was a guest of Joe Biden at a White House ceremony celebrating Biden’s signing of the Respect for Marriage Act on the South Lawn, WTOP reported.
Wojahn is the second mayor in two years in Maryland who was charged with the distribution of porn online. In 2021, Mayor Andrew Bradshaw, 32, mayor of Cambridge, was arrested and charged with 50 counts of distributing “revenge” porn on Reddit's online forum, prosecutors said.
NBC News reported that Bradshaw was accused of creating multiple Reddit accounts and posting naked photos captioned with racial slurs and sexually explicit language, according to State Prosecutor Charlton T. Howard III in a statement. The images were distributed without the victim's consent, who was only identified only as “VICTIM-1.”
The victim admitted sending the images only to Bradshaw when the two were involved in an intimate relationship. She said Bradshaw did not have her consent to share those images with third parties.
“Using someone’s private images without their consent is a serious breach of trust and invasion of privacy, and the power and breadth of the internet makes such a violation even more egregious,” Howard said in the statement. “Our office is committed to protecting victims from those who abuse their positions of power and trust.”
When Bradshaw was elected mayor, the city’s website described him as a lifelong resident of the area. It noted that he was “the youngest mayor in the City of Cambridge’s history.”
CBS News reported that Bradshaw avoided jail time in the case, pleading guilty to five counts of distributing revenge porn online and was sentenced to a year and a day for each of the five counts, a sentence which was suspended with no jail time. He was sentenced to supervised probation and fined $1,000 on each count.
Bradshaw was also ordered to pay the victim $750 in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service. Bradshaw faced a maximum of two years in jail and a $5,000 fine on each count.
Bradshaw resigned his post as Cambridge mayor two months after his arrest, WBOC reported.
Last March, former Mayor Patrick Wojahn, 47, was indicted by a Prince George’s County grand jury charging him with 80 counts of possession with intent to distribute child pornography. Online court records show that a superseding indictment was returned in May on 140 counts.
Wojahn pleaded guilty to all counts of the second indictment—60 counts of distribution of child porn, 40 counts of possession of child porn, and 40 counts of possession of child porn with intent to distribute. That plea occurred on August 2 in Prince George’s County Circuit Court.
Prosecutors said Wojahn’s plea and sentencing are one of the county's most significant for a similar crime.
“Each count represents a victim,” Assistant State’s Attorney Jessica Garth said following the hearing. “Even though he’s not sentenced to jail time for each count per se, he’s still accepting responsibility for each count.” Garth is the chief of the special victims and family violence unit.
Prosecutors say that Wojahn resigned his post just before his arrest and will be eligible for parole after serving roughly seven-and-one-half years, or 25 percent, of his sentence.
Wojahn’s attorney, David Moyse, appeared to downplay the crimes, telling the court that "there were no manufactured images” among the pornographic images Wojahn possessed. In other words, the pornography he pleaded guilty to possessing and distributing was not actually produced by Wojahn.
During the court proceeding, Wojahn stood beside his attorney as the judge read off the more than 100 charges, responding, “Yes, your honor,” afterward.
Wojahn’s arrest was the culmination of a weeks-long investigation after a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) reporting a suspicious account on Kik, a mobile messaging app, charging documents revealed. Investigators confirmed that Wojahn uploaded numerous pornographic videos that portrayed young boys with adult men.
When police executed a search warrant at Wojahn’s College Park residence, he admitted the Kik account was his, police said. He also admitted to using a private network when accessing the app. “Furthermore, he advised that he has viewed and possessed files depicting child pornography,” police said.
Garth said in open court that law enforcement officials searched several of Wojahn’s electronic devices, which contained over 1,500 videos and images depicting child porn and an additional 200-plus instances of distribution of child pornography across apps such as Kik and Telegram.
As part of the plea agreement, Wojahn will serve five years of probation following his release and must have no unsupervised contact with children. He also must subject himself to therapy and register with the sex offender registry for 25 years.
“As a former elected official, the College Park community puts its faith and support in him to serve each resident and their best interests. Instead, he let them down in the most disgraceful way,” Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Aisha Braveboy said in a news release. “Our children are both precious and vulnerable, deserving of the utmost protection. The tragedy of them being preyed upon in cases like this cannot be understated.”
College Park is the home of the University of Maryland. Wojahn served as mayor for seven years after serving eight years on the city council before that.
About two months before his arrest, Wojahn was a guest of Joe Biden at a White House ceremony celebrating Biden’s signing of the Respect for Marriage Act on the South Lawn, WTOP reported.
Wojahn is the second mayor in two years in Maryland who was charged with the distribution of porn online. In 2021, Mayor Andrew Bradshaw, 32, mayor of Cambridge, was arrested and charged with 50 counts of distributing “revenge” porn on Reddit's online forum, prosecutors said.
NBC News reported that Bradshaw was accused of creating multiple Reddit accounts and posting naked photos captioned with racial slurs and sexually explicit language, according to State Prosecutor Charlton T. Howard III in a statement. The images were distributed without the victim's consent, who was only identified only as “VICTIM-1.”
The victim admitted sending the images only to Bradshaw when the two were involved in an intimate relationship. She said Bradshaw did not have her consent to share those images with third parties.
“Using someone’s private images without their consent is a serious breach of trust and invasion of privacy, and the power and breadth of the internet makes such a violation even more egregious,” Howard said in the statement. “Our office is committed to protecting victims from those who abuse their positions of power and trust.”
When Bradshaw was elected mayor, the city’s website described him as a lifelong resident of the area. It noted that he was “the youngest mayor in the City of Cambridge’s history.”
CBS News reported that Bradshaw avoided jail time in the case, pleading guilty to five counts of distributing revenge porn online and was sentenced to a year and a day for each of the five counts, a sentence which was suspended with no jail time. He was sentenced to supervised probation and fined $1,000 on each count.
Bradshaw was also ordered to pay the victim $750 in restitution and perform 100 hours of community service. Bradshaw faced a maximum of two years in jail and a $5,000 fine on each count.
Bradshaw resigned his post as Cambridge mayor two months after his arrest, WBOC reported.
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