CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES
A volunteer Boy Scout commissioner was sentenced Tuesday to 30 days in jail and three years’ probation after a Los Angeles County Superior Court jury found him guilty of possessing and distributing child pornography.
Prosecutors originally asked that Gerald Frederick Curland, 63, of Valley Village serve one year in jail, but the judge reduced the sentence to one month because of Curland’s poor health. He surrendered to the Twin Towers jail in December and completed his 30 days before appearing in court this week.
Officials said their investigation started in 2007 after American Online Services alerted them that it had “captured one image of child pornography in an e-mail attachment” sent by Curland to an out-of-state e-mail address.
An investigation unearthed 80,000 images stored on a personal computer. Seventy percent of those images are considered legal because the minors were not engaged in sexual activity, though many were nude or in suggestive positions, said prosecutor Marc Beaart of the district attorney’s High-Tech Crimes Division.
Curland’s sentence requires that he register as a sexual offender within five days. He cannot be alone with minors.
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