So far, her client has filed for restitution in more than 200 federal criminal cases across the country, and received more than 50 orders for payment - though not much money has come in because many defendants have little means.
She is seeking about $1 million to date for counseling, lost wages, extra educational costs and evidence gathering, Ms. When people are convicted in federal court of possessing pornographic images of her, she files motions to receive damages, her lawyer, Carol L. I swear to God nothing like this will ever happen again.”įor the young woman at the center of the Vicky series, offering an impact statement is part of a two-pronged legal approach seeking some relief for her past. Fanning said: “I pray for them and their families every day. “I would never do anything to hurt anyone.”Īs for the victims in the case, Mr. “The phrase ‘Lord knows, I’m sorry,’ comes to mind,” he told the judge. Fanning apologized after hearing the victim’s statement. Fanning pleaded guilty to two counts of promoting sexual performance by a child: one for obtaining a video featuring a 3-year-old girl engaged in a sex act with an adult male and one for the Vicky video. officer makes this case all the more disturbing.”
“The fact that the defendant is a retired N.Y.P.D. “The children who are depicted in these vile videos are real children,” said Richard A. Fanning, 48, of Ozone Park, to up to 10 years in prison. Victim-impact statements from the woman’s mother and stepfather were also introduced into the record, though not read aloud. Crowds were unbearable, she said, and she withdrew from college because of panic attacks.Īnd each time she learns that images of her “naked body being tortured” are at the center of another court case against a purveyor of child pornography, she feels exploited anew. In her statement, she described enduring flashbacks, nightmares and paranoia. Prosecutors have withheld her real name because she is a repeat victim of child abuse: her father sexually abused her and filmed those acts more than a decade ago. It feels like I am being raped by each and every one of them.” They are trading my trauma around like treats at a party, but it is far from innocent. Because the most intimate parts of me are being viewed by thousands of strangers, and traded around, I feel out of control. “I wonder if the men I pass in the grocery store have seen them. “I wonder if the people I know have seen these images,” the woman wrote, according to the statement, which was read by a senior assistant district attorney, Kateri A.
Her circumstances were not familiar to him he knew her only as “Vicky,” the self-titled subject of a series of videos popular in child-pornography circles.īut on Thursday, Matthew Fanning, a retired New York City police officer, came to learn more about Vicky, who is now in her 20s, as her victim-impact statement was read aloud at his sentencing in State Supreme Court in Queens. He had never met the young girl, recognizing her only through a 15-minute video he had downloaded that showed her being sexually abused by a man.