By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com
A 40-year-old director of a Boy Scout camp in Western Michigan got socked on Friday with a 95-year prison term in Grand Rapids federal court for child pornography charges.
Specifically, Scott Allan Herrick surreptitiously videotaped boys as they were dressing in the locker room in the YMCA in Muskegon, and kept a massive collection of 100,000 images of child pornography with him at the Gerber Boy Scout Camp in Twin Lakes, Mich., federal authorities said.
On the first day of trial, Herrick pleaded guilty to two counts of distributing child pornography and one count of possessing child pornography.
U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney said at sentencing that that the sexual exploitation of children by using institutions like the Boy Scouts and the YMCA “tears at the social fabric of our country.”
Herrick was the camp director for Gerber Boy Scout Camp in Twin Lakes, Mich., and also worked as a pool safety instructor for third grade children at the YMCA in Muskegon.
Authorities said he was trading child pornography and was discovered during a series of undercover FBI operations. He was arrested July 8.
U.S. Attorney Donald A. Davis echoed the judge’s concerns: “Herrick used and abused his position of trust in organizations dedicated to the health and welfare of children to satisfy his own perverse sexual interest in young boys.”
Not all Boy Scout employees share the same luck.
Prosecutors move to dismiss charges against former Scout leader
January 3, 2007
NEW HAVEN, Conn. –Federal prosecutors have moved to dismiss charges against a retired FBI agent who was indicted on child sex charges dating back more than a decade when he was a Boy Scout leader, in response to the death of his accuser.
William Hutton, 63, of Killingworth, was arrested in February on charges he enticed a member of his Scout troop to Maine for the purpose of sexual activity in 1994 and 1995.