Join me to hear the heinous electronic true crime story of Catholic priest James Ward Jackson, the pious pedophile who amassed tens of thousands of pictures and videos of child porn. This is eCrimeBytes.com Season 3, Episode 1 – Catholic Priest James W. Jackson’s Child Porn – Act 2: Busted Again.
Be sure to catch up on act 1 here:
Sources:
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/61586140/united-states-v-jackson/
- https://www.boston.com/news/crime/2023/12/15/rhode-island-catholic-priest-sentenced-child-sexual-abuse-images/
- https://www.thenewportbuzz.com/rhode-island-priest-appears-in-federal-court-on-charges-of-distributing-receiving-child-pornography/33022 (Photo)
- https://www.ncregister.com/cna/fssp-priest-faces-new-federal-child-pornography-charges (Photo)
Transcript:
00:00:10:00 – 00:00:35:37
Keith
Hey ya crazy bastards. Welcome back to eCrimeBytes. This is where I research the court documentation and roast the criminals so you don’t have to. This week I’m bringing you season three episode one. This is James Jackson. He’s a Catholic priest, and he’s got a lot of child porn. So this is act two that I’m bringing you. Yesterday I brought you act one.
00:00:35:37 – 00:00:57:40
Keith
So let me get you caught up real quick. If you’re not going to go back and watch act one, I do recommend you go back and watch it for the the background. But if not, let me get you caught up real quick. So in act one, there was a detective doing routine investigations out there on the Internet, found that there was a computer on the Internet sharing child pornography, a video.
00:00:57:45 – 00:01:15:20
Keith
And I’m not going to go through the subject or if I want to hear it again, you got to back up and listen to Act One because I described it back there. It was not good. So in that investigation, they have this IP address, which is a numerical address of a computer on the Internet, but they don’t know who is behind it.
00:01:15:25 – 00:01:49:15
Keith
So they do an investigation and they find out that it’s geo located to Providence, Rhode Island, and they find out it belongs to Verizon. And they do a court process where they go to Verizon and they say, Who did you sublease this to at this time? And they said, that’s Saint Mary’s Church in Providence, Rhode Island. Cops say thanks and they get their search warrant, go straight over to Saint Mary’s Church and start searching and James Jackson, he decides to stay silent.
00:01:49:20 – 00:02:22:09
Keith
He you know, they read him his Miranda rights and he decides to stay silent. But they do an investigation. They find external hard drives, computers, phones, all that kind of stuff. Preliminary examination found child porn, and they said, Holy shit, we better take this all back to the lab and look at it thoroughly. And they did. And they counted them up and they found 12,000 images, 12,000 images and over 1000 videos on Mr. Jackson’s devices, which included hard drives and things.
00:02:22:14 – 00:02:45:39
Keith
So they arrest him. So he’s not convicted yet. So he’s still free. He’s out on bond. And because of that, he still has some freedom. But the court doesn’t give him all his freedom. They don’t want him to go out there and just view child porn because he’s accused of viewing child porn. So they said, we’re going to monitor your devices just to make sure you’re not viewing child porn.
00:02:45:44 – 00:03:07:45
Keith
He says, you know what? That sounds totally reasonable. Let’s do that. And since the government doesn’t give you a device, you got to supply them a device. He did. And there was a bunch of stuff out there that sounded like he was viewing child porn. They didn’t have the actual content, but it sure as shit sounded like it by the file names and all that kind of stuff.
00:03:07:49 – 00:03:27:32
Keith
So that’s where I last left you was that little instance where he turned that in and, you know, he turned in a computer that he could have very easily gone to Best Buy and bought a brand new computer that didn’t have anything on it, never had a child’s name or anything on it, and turned it into the government and said, monitor this.
00:03:27:37 – 00:04:03:37
Keith
But he didn’t. He turned in a computer that had stuff that sounded like he was viewing child porn. It doesn’t stop there. That’s why we have an act two. That’s why you’re watching me right now. This one is called Act two Busted Again, because he does some more shit. So July 12th, 2022, Mr. Jackson is out on bond before pretrial, and in November of 2021, I told you previously that he’s allowed to go move in with his sister and he is in Rhode Island.
00:04:03:37 – 00:04:27:36
Keith
His sister’s in Kansas. So that is pretty much across the country of the United States. He’s not just moving next door. He’s moving all the way across the United States. It’s like a multiday car drive for him to do so. And then once he was out there, he’s then being supervised by the court system in Kansas.
00:04:27:36 – 00:04:35:23
Keith
So it’s there is a search warrant.
00:04:35:28 – 00:05:01:45
Keith
I don’t have the full details on this, but I do know that there was a search warrant issued for where Mr. Jackson was living in Kansas, which was his sister’s place. Imagine being in that place, he and his sister, and getting that wake up call. This search warrant was in response to a child pornography investigation in which Mr. Jackson was a primary target.
00:05:01:49 – 00:05:26:02
Keith
So he didn’t stop up. It sounds like he didn’t stop at all. The investigation brought more or it discovered more Internet activity linked to Mr. Jackson from May of 2022 through June of 2022. And when he accessed child pornography.
00:05:26:07 – 00:05:45:30
Keith
So when they went there, the detectives went there and executed their search warrant. They found a Microsoft Surface Pro Computer and an external hard drive, both of which are seized. Why? Because that wasn’t neither one was authorized by the court. That’s why I explained to you that whole stuff where you’re like, why is he explaining to me about these computers and things.
00:05:45:35 – 00:06:08:47
Keith
He was only authorized to have that one computer that he brought in. That had child porn sounding things on it, but now he has a microsoft Surface computer that he was not authorized. So you can imagine he probably had some real heinous shit on this computer. So at this time, they couldn’t see anything on this computer. They just have the computer so they don’t have any reason to arrest him.
00:06:08:52 – 00:06:09:38
Keith
So
00:06:09:38 – 00:06:39:16
Keith
there is a forensic investigation. And even though the investigation picked up like his his last laptop, they picked up that there were indicators that he was viewing child porn on this computer. There wasn’t the content itself. So Jackson had a bunch of claims about why the detectives were finding the things that they were finding, like file names that were very child porn, specific sounding names.
00:06:39:21 – 00:07:00:57
Keith
He would just be like, You just found file names. You didn’t find the contents of those files. So it wasn’t really child porn, but in my opinion is like, what if something sounds like child porn in the file name? What would be the coincidence? What would be the coincidence of, you know, Jenny, I can’t remember what it was.
00:07:00:57 – 00:07:21:13
Keith
Jenny and her dad was the one that I told you about Jenny and her father or something like that. How would that be anything else? I mean, I realize it could. It could. It could sound like other things if you just say Jenny and her father, but for other porn names that have the porn act in the title, how could it be anything else?
00:07:21:15 – 00:07:45:35
Keith
How could it be anything else? All right. So then there was an argument that the child porn could be somebody else’s. And I’m sitting there thinking, okay, well, if you’re in Kansas, you’re at your sister and your husband’s and her husband. So is it theirs? I don’t know what kind of argument he’s making there. And then the government comes back and says, you know, we did the investigation.
00:07:45:35 – 00:08:19:16
Keith
We found pictures of you on these devices. So the devices are clearly yours. They’re not anybody else’s. It’s not like Bob came in and left a device there and there’s no pictures of Jackson. That’s clearly something that Jackson used. Now, another thing that the Jackson Jackson tried to claim to get some evidence thrown out was he tried to claim that the detectives didn’t do enough, an investigation to figure out who in the church should be investigated via the search warrant.
00:08:19:29 – 00:08:45:52
Keith
It basically said you had a search warrant of the church and you accidentally found me and you shouldn’t have been able to do that. You should have had to figure out it was me before you were given a search warrant to come find all the porn that you found in my shit. I know. Convoluted argument, right? So that’s why he was trying to argue to get the the evidence of all the child porn that they found thrown out of court.
00:08:45:57 – 00:08:59:50
Keith
And the government basically came back and said that’s kind of the purpose of the search warrant, is to figure out who inside a residence is doing the bad deed and arrest them, not, you know, we can’t tell you who it is until we get that information.
00:08:59:50 – 00:09:04:29
Keith
So a little time goes by an now we’re in June 8th of 2023.
00:09:04:29 – 00:09:32:42
Keith
This is about a year later after they found him violating his pretrial release of having a surface pro. He pled guilty, but he only pled guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography. So probably the least amount on paper that the guy could plead to, he pled guilty. So he then goes out and apologizes to his community.
00:09:32:42 – 00:09:55:10
Keith
And I read about this and I was like, how did he do this? Well, he did it in a handwritten letter and I have it for you. I’m gonna paste it on your screen now if you’re watching this. Audio viewers, I’m just going to read it for you now. So at the top, it says August 6, 2023. It says Dear F.r., which maybe it’s Friar and it’s a name I can’t pronounce.
00:09:55:10 – 00:10:20:55
Keith
I can’t. It’s handwritten. So I’m Lawrence, maybe, and all members of the FSSP, which I imagine it’s some church acronym that I don’t know. So his letter says, The vile sin into which I fell and for which I am guilty has caused immeasurable harm. I have sinned against God, children, you, friends and family.
00:10:20:55 – 00:10:46:10
Keith
former students and former parishioners and many other others besides. I cannot repair the damage, but I must try. I hope you will accept this apology. I am sorry at a level I’ve never experienced before. I am ashamed beyond any shame I’ve known. I will be offering reparations.
00:10:46:10 – 00:10:58:29
Keith
Penances and what good works I can for you long after I am dismissed from the fraternity, and praying for you in a reformed life until my dying day with a broken heart.
00:10:58:33 – 00:11:20:07
Keith
Jim Jackson. I apologize for the pauses and stuff. Give me a give me a little bit of leeway here. If you’re watching this, look at how it’s a handwriting, man. I had to read this guy’s handwriting. So basically, it’s an apology of I’m terribly sorry I did this. This is utterly embarrassing. And I. I don’t even know how you would write an apology letter for child porn.
00:11:20:07 – 00:11:51:05
Keith
It’s amazing. Amazingly heinous. So December 11th of 2023, Jackson’s her sister. Remember, he moved in with her in Kansas. She wrote a letter to the judge. This is to basically say, hey, go lenient on my brother because he pled guilty. He had that letter to his parishioners and his friends and family. But then she wrote this letter and I and I don’t have a full letter.
00:11:51:05 – 00:12:22:02
Keith
Well, I do have the full letter. It’s longer, but I’m just going to give you some bullet points here. First is she claims that Jackson was molested by an older woman when he was ten. Okay. I got to stop there for a second. This is not to pardon Jackson in any way. I, I personally don’t think if a person was molested that they have any right to do anything to anybody else.
00:12:22:07 – 00:12:51:13
Keith
It doesn’t it doesn’t make their crime any less, is what I’m trying to say here. Okay. So with that, given this is a common theme, a lot of times molesters had been molested themselves. So hearing this also was not surprising to me because in these cases that I’ve been bringing you on child porn, it’s almost every time when the person is caught, they said, hey, I was molested myself when I was young.
00:12:51:18 – 00:13:17:41
Keith
So apparently after he was molested, he lived a life of drugs and partying till college, the drugs and partying part that sounded pretty cool. I that part I, I can I can get behind that until he took LSD laced with strychnine and that caused him to be hospitalized. I feel bad for him there. It sounded like this was around a turning point in his life because his college endeavors finally led them to a religion.
00:13:17:45 – 00:13:40:48
Keith
And that may or he then converted from Protestant to Catholic at that point, which surprised his family from what I read, and I know I, I only tell you a smidgen what I’ve read. Just the tip of the iceberg. I have to read a lot of documents that get these these little nuggets. So going into sentencing, what are the stakes?
00:13:40:53 – 00:14:11:07
Keith
Jackson he says he wants no more than 60 months, six, zero, six months or five years. Did I say six months? 60 months or five years. The government the government says they want at least 60 months or the least was five years, and there were at least ten years of supervised release. Holy shit, can we make it life? Can we make a life of supervised release?
00:14:11:07 – 00:14:27:41
Keith
At least it just seemed like if if if a priest is caught with child pornography, he should be monitored the rest of his life because he was supposed to be on his best behavior as a priest.
00:14:27:46 – 00:14:56:08
Keith
So then there are victims statements, and these are kind of these are interesting. Like they they were probably the biggest point in the research for me when I started reading these things. They put faces behind this whole heinous child porn epidemic that’s out there. And I’m going to read you them because they’re not they they accurately describe what the victims go through.
00:14:56:17 – 00:15:20:35
Keith
So this one victim impact statement is the victim in they quote unquote, Vicky series, which is a series that was downloaded to the computer or one of the hard drives that Mr. Jackson owned. And they said, I live every day with the horrible knowledge that many people somewhere are watching the most terrifying moments of my life and taking grotesque pleasure in them.
00:15:20:40 – 00:15:42:29
Keith
I am the victim of the worst kind of exploitation child porn. Unlike other forms of exploitation, this one is never ending. Every day people are trading and sharing videos of me as a little girl being raped in the most sadistic ways. They don’t know me, but they have seen every part of me. They are being entertained by my pain and shame.
00:15:42:29 – 00:16:06:56
Keith
So then they got a victim impact statement. But it’s from her husband, which I thought this was pretty interesting. I’ll read it in its entirety too. It says in my home every day is riddled with challenges. Unfortunately, time can’t heal all things. This is especially true as we face the persecution of a wound open again and again for the pleasure of strangers.
00:16:07:01 – 00:16:24:18
Keith
You have more impact than you know. It is our desire not only that justice be served, but that true change would be enacted through the enlightenment of this unfortunate situation. You are a participant in that crime. You became part of the problem. I’m asking you now to help us make amends for your sins and the sins of many.
00:16:24:23 – 00:16:51:52
Keith
Please speak out against this act. Impact the world around you for good, and turn away from what I can only describe as great evil in our midst. This evil creeps into the lives of otherwise good men and begins to corrupt the heart. I’m imperfect, so how could I expect you to be? You have already been forgiven. And I want nothing more than your full restoration without mar of your past habit and appetites.
00:16:51:57 – 00:17:12:25
Keith
Unfortunately, that means consequences. Those that challenge you and place you in new scenarios of life. I believe God has a plan for you. He has not cast you aside or condemn you outright. Please consider the ways you can turn your perspective around. Experience true, repent and walk freely as a man redeemed.
00:17:12:25 – 00:17:27:21
Keith
That was pretty powerful, right? I had to read you full verbatim, both of those from the victim and the victim’s husband, because when I read those, I had to sit back and just go, Wow, you know, just a lot of other crimes
00:17:27:21 – 00:17:51:23
Keith
you only get victimized once. And these people are victimized every single day. Well, here’s another victim statement, another one from a different series said, My childhood innocence was stolen and continues to be exploited on a daily basis by strangers, knowing that I cannot retrieve the photos or videos, nor can I remove them from the Internet. And the dark web makes me feel hopeless and I’m sorry, helpless and powerless.
00:17:51:28 – 00:18:11:22
Keith
The effects of ongoing abuse are irregular and unpredictable. Every day is a new challenge and I never know what’s going to happen. I am scared to leave the house and fear that someone will know who I am and either put me in danger or make me feel less than myself or draw attention to me in ways I do not want.
00:18:11:27 – 00:18:45:00
Keith
And it’s important to note that many of the victims they claim they receive and I use air quotes here, fan mail from pedophiles, stalkers and other child pornography collectors trying to locate them, you know, basically making their lives hell. And because of this, just the rest of their lives, they, you know, spend in panic attacks, anxiety attacks. They have trouble in relationships.
00:18:45:00 – 00:18:50:29
Keith
I mean, all these things that you would imagine you would have difficulty with after being abused like this.
00:18:50:29 – 00:19:07:30
Keith
So finally, finally, the court goes back, looks at all the evidence of victim impact statements. It comes back and says 72 months or six years as to count one. And I stopped for a moment and I it added up in my mind.
00:19:07:30 – 00:19:34:21
Keith
I was like six years for child porn. Okay, maybe for a picture or two. But this fucker had 12,000 pictures and over a thousand videos, it seems, in my opinion, kind of light. So his supervised release five years and there I kind of jumped. I was like, my God, I can’t believe it was only five years.
00:19:34:26 – 00:20:16:29
Keith
The government was asking for ten. I thought they’d at least get ten on this because it’s supervised, you know that he still gets to be out. But nope, they, they, they made that five years. So he’s going to be in prison for six and supervised for five. So when he’s being supervised, he has to agree to a bunch of things like, you know, search of his person, search of his computers, can’t be in contact of children under the age of 18, can’t loiter where children congregate, can’t be employed by occupations where you come into contact with children, you know, your residence, you have to be approved by the probation office.
00:20:16:29 – 00:20:47:07
Keith
You can’t be at a residence that has children in it. Just basically, let’s keep this guy away from kids as much as possible. And then they said, you got to pay some money. You got to pay. Let’s see, it is $22,100. If you combine it all up and the lion’s share of it, about $22,000 of it is supposed to go to victims.
00:20:47:11 – 00:21:23:47
Keith
And I’m not going to give you who the victims were or anything. But basically it looks like it’s a footnote at the bottom of the court documentation that there’s like this assistance act that has set up an organization and then the money goes to the organization and gets distributed to victims from there, which I thought was a neat way to try to get some restitution to the victims, because I think probably a lot of times the pedophiles don’t think that the victims can ever get anything from them.
00:21:23:47 – 00:21:50:24
Keith
But in this case, they’re going to they’re going to get prison time from them, but they’re also going to get monetary value from them as well. And you imagine if a person can’t pay that they can’t pay $22,000, they’re sort of under the thumb of the court at that point, too, because they’re going to have to pay. They’re probably going to garnish wages on their paycheck or something along those lines until it’s eventually paid to the victims.
00:21:50:29 – 00:22:16:23
Keith
And lastly, all the property that he used to commit these crimes was forfeited, which was it was two different Hewlett-Packard laptops. There was an external hard drive, actually, there were three external hard drives, and then there was a Samsung cell phone all forfeited by Mr. Jackson because he pled guilty. And that’s it. Oh thankGod that’s it. I’m sorry.
00:22:16:23 – 00:22:42:53
Keith
I had to bring you the sensitive portions of this to sort of get the lay of the land. I hope you appreciate it, at least in the long run, to be able to understand this case. Just some final thoughts here. One, my God. The dude handed the government a computer that had indications that he was using, he was searching for child porn even before he had a trial.
00:22:42:58 – 00:23:08:00
Keith
That just kind of blew my mind. Well, why didn’t he just go buy a new computer or just anything else? He handed them a computer that showed he had evidence. It just still blows my mind. So I put a giant WITF for my notes next to that one because it just seems improbable. But he did it. And then this whole case, I just kept thinking about how child porn it it’s it’s definitely a sickness.
00:23:08:08 – 00:23:31:19
Keith
And I’m not saying it’s a sickness as to like, alleviate any responsibility from the parties involved here. They should be punished. But it’s a sickness because you see, you see people out on bond before the trial, like in this case. And you would think they would go, hey, all I have to do is just play it cool for six months to a year or whatever
00:23:31:19 – 00:23:52:11
Keith
they have to play it cool for have my trial and then I’m over. But they always go back like they do in this case and get a, you know, Microsoft Surface Computer and access the Internet or in the other cases were very similar actions last year that I brought you in the other episodes with child porn were involved where, you know, they went out and still looked at it, even though they weren’t supposed to.
00:23:52:12 – 00:24:16:42
Keith
Yeah. So it’s definitely a sickness and I can’t help but see patterns in these cases that I’ve been bringing you where it seems that molesters are molested first and then they do what you know, they molest other people or they victimize them or they download child porn, as in this case, or they victimize someone else in some way, shape or form.
00:24:16:47 – 00:24:53:24
Keith
But that cycle has to get broken right? Someone somewhere has to say, I know I was a victim and I know I have a propensity of this, but I have to fight it and not do it. That’s I think the only way it’s going to stop. And just the last underlying bullet here is I you know, I again, I have to apologize sometimes on these subject areas, but child porn is if I took the numbers, just the numbers of cases out there that I have to sift through to find good cases, I would say 80% of the cases I get initially are child porn.
00:24:53:24 – 00:25:29:19
Keith
And I go, I got to set those aside to go find the, you know, the Bitcoin thefts and the other non child porn cases. So the the lion’s share of the cases out there, even though maybe you only hear them once or twice a season or a year on this podcast, do know for every other one that I give you, there’s probably 10 to 20 child porn cases that I had to throw out just to get to the to the non child porn cases because there’s so much child porn crime going on on the Internet.
00:25:29:22 – 00:25:55:23
Keith
It’s just it’s the lion’s share of what’s out there unfortunately. And so that’s it. So before I give you a preview of next week, let me remind you now, I know the subject area is not fun, but I hope you can appreciate the amount of research, the amount of court documents, the amount of reading, the amount of slide writing, the amount of editing, all the stuff that I have to do to put this episode together.
00:25:55:28 – 00:26:17:22
Keith
And if you appreciate any of that, please thumbs up, like, follow, subscribe. Whatever the positive affirmation thing is on the platform it is that you’re currently watching me on, please do. That helps me out a lot and if you could reshare helps me even more because then I get introduced to people that would have never known about this podcast.
00:26:17:27 – 00:26:33:18
Keith
I’m not an ad guy. You’re not going to see me going out there buying ads and putting our case out there. This is just going to be a I’ll do it every week and organically people that are interested in the topic area will hopefully join me every week. And so with that, let me tell you about next week.
00:26:33:22 – 00:26:57:05
Keith
Okay. So next week, boom, I put this on your screen here, an epic Florida gang’s RICO tax fraud. That was the best title I could come up with this one, because there are nine individuals that do a whole lot of theft and then they get a whole bunch of money. And I say a whole bunch of money. I mean, millions of dollars, millions of dollars using tax fraud.
00:26:57:10 – 00:27:22:57
Keith
And I’m going to outline that whole scheme for you and I’m going to outline how it went down. I’m going to outline the court process for each one of the nine who who went to trial, who pled guilty. And then I’m going to outline all the sentences that we have at the time. So it’s going to be a really large case of just people wise that it’s going to be a lot of fun to listen to.
00:27:22:57 – 00:27:32:03
Keith
It is going to be completely different than this child porn case that you listen to today. So I hope you come back next week and join me on that one. Thanks. Bye.
Leave a Reply