A former child psychologist who admitted to having more than 600 videos and pictures depicting child pornography was sentenced Friday to 6-and-a-half years behind bars in a California court.
According to the Berkley Patch, prosecutors said Contra Costa child psychologist Kenneth Allen Breslin, 69, was in possession of illicit images that depicted “prepubescent children being subjected to sadistic content,” prosecutors said in a news release. Investigators located the videos and pictures on electronic devices at his Lafayette home and former child psychology office in Orinda.
The Mercury News notes that the ex-psychologist was referred patients by the county’s Child Protection Services and family courts system, which prosecutors said made the crime even more heinous. Police said none of the videos or images were of his patients.
“What’s most disturbing about this particular case is that Breslin was in a position of public trust as a psychologist and had worked extensively with children in the past,” special agent Ryan Spradlin said in a news release.
At one point, Breslin penned a letter of support claiming he had instructed a 22-year-old patient with a child porn addiction to get all the porn off his computer and save it to a thumb drive, to turn over to him. From there, Breslin claimed he had the patient select a video and “tell a story about how or under what circumstances these females ended up performing these sexual acts.”
Breslin went on to write that he behaved “terribly irresponsibly” but said the bright side was that he spared a young man from going to jail. (The letter of support can be read in its entirety below.)
Federal officials disagreed.
Authorities wrote that Breslin “completely mischaracterized” the accusations against him. Specifically, they noted that Breslin used Google to search for the child porn and a server to reroute his Internet history, the newspaper reported.
In addition to his prison sentence, Breslin was ordered to pay $85,000 to his 13 victims, serve a 5-year supervised release period, and register as a sex offender.
“Each time these images are shared, traded, downloaded and distributed, it re-victimizes these children who in essence have been given a life sentence themselves from the perpetual circulation of their videotaped sexual assaults,” Contra Costa District Attorney inspector Darryl Holcombe told The Mercury News in an email.
“[Breslin’s] sentence was a win for those victims.”
[Featured image: Kenneth Allen Breslin/Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office]
