Former ABC News producer James Gordon Meek is asking for leniency from the judge who will sentence him this week, arguing that his war and torture reporting laid the groundwork for his child-pornography habit.
“While the foregoing issues by no means excuse Mr. Meek’s conduct, they help to explain the constellation of factors that compromised his decision-making and contributed to conduct that was completely out of step with his history of kindness and service to others,” Meek’s lawyer, Eugene Gorokhov, wrote in a court filing that asked for a maximum prison term of five years.
Meek, who pleaded guilty to hoarding the most vile images showing children being sexually assaulted, tried to bolster his argument with supportive letters from ex-military officials and journalism colleagues. They include Andrew Fredericks, a documentarian who promised to “stand will [sic] by him, and try to help him overcome and grow” and former Washington Post reporter Allan Lengel, who wrote that he worked to reconcile Meek’s crimes and “came to accept the situation, and still care deeply about James as a friend and remain supportive as he makes his journey through the criminal justice system.”
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As first reported in The Daily Beast’s media newsletter, Confider, Meek’s lawyer said the reporter’s work came at a personal cost “ in the form of his mental health” and cited a 2017 interview with El Vaquero, Glendale Community College’s student newspaper, in which Meek spoke about the effects covering war.
“As incredible as it may seem, in the past four years terrorism has become an even more difficult subject to cover and also maintain my own emotional health and morale,” he said.
“Man’s inhumanity to man met the smartphone in places such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, and exposure to the carnage and cruelty of warfare has increased exponentially in my work because it has become so easy to document and distribute globally. It is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is being able to have a window on the battlefield; the drawbacks include lack of context and simple volume of cruelty and death imagery online.”
Dr. Stephanie Wolf, a clinical psychiatrist who specializes in trauma, told The Daily Beast that tying Meek’s reporting to his deviant behavior may sound like an “unusual and outlandish argument”—but one that could have some merit.
“There is some research that suggests that there is an increased likelihood, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that's what happened—that in the individual case, that's what happened,” Wolf, who is not involved in Meek’s case, said.
Wolf said that war-induced trauma, like other kinds, can trigger addictive behavior that could include pornography—and then the urge to seek out alternative content.
“It can lead to a kind of a feedback loop, if you will, where, once they've had that exposure, that distractive components are helpful and kind of soothing, and then they return to that,” Wolf said. “The more that they return to that, what we see a lot in various pornography use, is that the more kind of deviant… and the more usage is needed to reach that same kind of level of either arousal or have positive chemicals in the brain.”
Meek’s attorney said his client did not seek help for his deepening interest in child pornography, writing, “As is typical in cases involving this type of conduct, individuals are reluctant to seek out help both because of the shame involved and fear of the legal consequences.”
In their own filings seeking a maximum prison term of almost 16 years, prosecutors detailed how Meek consumed and hoarded multiple devices’ worth of the material.
Prosecutors outlined how Meek became engrossed in the world of child pornography, sharing graphic images of child sexual abuse. Meek was also part of a group chat on Telegram that trafficked in the material, and had interacted with people online who identified as minors and persuaded them to share photos of their genitals.
“He sought out individuals and groups on the internet specifically for facilitating this conduct,” prosecutors wrote. “Moreover, the evidence makes clear that the defendant sought out minors online for sexual purposes, including by posing as a minor himself.”
