Okinawa Marine jailed for child porn
By David Allen, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Friday, September 7, 2007

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A Marine was sentenced here Wednesday to a bad-conduct discharge and 360 days in the brig for downloading child pornography during a five-month period last year.

Lance Cpl. Calvin Peterson, 25, pleaded guilty to using a computer at The Spot, a food court and Internet cafe on Camp Foster, numerous times from May to November to download at least 20 video clips and photos of young boys and girls engaged in sex with adults.

According to his answers to the judge’s questions, he downloaded the files onto a portable storage device and also an Internet peer-to-peer file-sharing Web site.

Peterson worked as a clerk in the Installation Personnel Administrative Center on Camp Foster.

The judge, Maj. Charles Hale, also reduced Peterson in rank to private, ordered him to forfeit $750 of his pay for 12 months and imposed a $1,200 fine. Under the terms of a plea agreement, jail time exceeding 10 months was suspended.

As part of the agreement, charges of possessing pornography depicting bestiality and failing to obey an order were withdrawn by the prosecutor, Capt. Robert Eckert, who argued for the maximum sentence — the discharge and 12 months in jail.

“Send a message to the Okinawa military community,” Eckert told the judge. “If you download child pornography, you’re going to jail for a year.”

In November, an employee of The Spot saw Peterson hunkered over a computer, trying to block her view of what he was downloading, Eckert said. He urged Hale to consider the effect the pornography industry has on the children involved.

“It’s people like the accused who feeds the demand for this disgusting material,” he said.

Capt. Kristy Milton, Peterson’s attorney, asked for leniency, arguing that a federal conviction and having to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life was punishment enough.

Besides, she added, three supervisors had testified that Peterson was an excellent worker who, during the 10 months leading up to the court-martial, “hasn’t dropped his pack.”

Ellie