A former Los Angeles city official was sentenced Monday to seven years in federal prison for distributing child pornography, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
After serving those seven years, Albert Noah Abrams, 64, will be a lifetime registered sex offender and will be on continuous supervised release.
He was arrested in Februrary and pleaded not guilty in May to eight counts of distributing, receiving and possessing child pornography, according to the California U.S. Attorney's office.
In September, he pleaded guilty to one count of distributing child pornography.
On Monday, the presiding judge said that Abram’s "crime was more than merely looking at pictures and was not a victimless crime." Nearly two dozen victims depicted in the child pornography found in Abram’s possession submitted impact statements to the court.
"I live everyday with the horrible knowledge that many people somewhere are watching the most terrifying moments of my life and taking grotesque pleasure in them," one victim wrote, according to the prosecutor’s sentencing memo.
For more than a decade, Abrams had been collected child pornography and amassed thousands of images, prosecutors said.
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“[H]e also downloaded the ‘Hunter’s Guide to Finding Child Lovers,’ which is a 170-page document giving pedophiles advice on how to find and have sexual contact with children,” prosecutors said in court papers, according to the DOJ.
Abrams was president of the City of Los Angeles’ Board of Neighborhood Commissions until Aug. 2011, when he resigned days after federal authorities searched his Tarzana residence.
Authorities obtained a search warrant after they reported using a file-sharing network to download more than 150 videos and images depicting child pornography from a computer located in Abram’s house, according to an indictment released earlier this year.
Federal agents seized a computer and two external hard drives, which authorities said contained more than 3,500 pictures and 4,200 videos of suspected child pornography. The devices also had more than 3,000 deleted pictures of child pornography and more than 4,000 deleted video files that “had names suggested child pornography,” investigators said.
