The Lexington Herald-Leader once again hides a mugshot, this time of a convicted child pornographer.

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In our continuing coverage to tell you what the Lexington Herald-Leader will not, we note that, once again, the newspaper won’t show you what a convicted criminal looks like:

    He used app to get images from 7-year-old. Central Kentucky man gets long sentence.

    By Rayleigh Deaton | July 16, 2021 | 10:04 AM EDT

    A Berea man was sentenced to nearly 18 years in federal prison for using a minor to produce child pornography.

    According to the U.S. attorney’s office, in May 2020, 33-year-old Bradley Scott Helton communicated with a 7-year-old via an app called “Kiss Kiss: Spin the Bottle.” Helton’s plea agreement said he sent the victim sexual videos and pictures and requested the victim send sexual videos in return.

Bradley Helton

There’s more at the original. What wasn’t in the original was Mr Helton’s mugshot. That was in WTVQ-TV’s report:

    FRANKFORT, Ky. (WTVQ) – A Berea, Ky., man,[1]Correction: Mr Helton may be a male, but he is certainly not a man, something which I expect will be made very clear to him in prison. Bradley Scott Helton, 33, was sentenced Thursday to 214 months in federal prison, by U.S. District Judge Gregory VanTatenhove, for using a minor to produce child pornography.

    According to Helton’s plea agreement, on May 16, 2020, he communicated with a 7-year-old victim, via an app called “Kiss Kiss: Spin the Bottle,” according to federal prosecutors.

    Helton admitted to chatting with the victim, sending the victim sexual videos and pictures, and requesting the victim send sexual videos in return, according to court records.

    Helton admitted he persuaded and used the 7-year-old victim to engage in sexually explicit conduct, for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of that conduct, prosecutors said.

    He further admitted the images traveled in interstate commerce when the victim, who was in Texas, sent them to him, in Kentucky, via the app.

    Helton pleaded guilty in March 2021.

    Under federal law, Helton must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence and will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for 25 years, following his release from prison.

214 months times 0.85 = 181.9 month, or 15 years and 2 months. Mr Helton could get out of prison when he is still only 48 years old.

Why, I have to ask, did the Herald-Leader not publish Mr Helton’s mugshot? He is not, after all, someone simply accused of a crime and who might eventually be acquitted, but a man male who has admitted his guilt, a convicted child pornographer.

Mr Helton has forfeited all of his privacy rights, and what responsible journalists used to claim was the public’s right to know ought to take precedence.[2]I cannot blame Rayleigh Deaton, the article author, in that she’s an intern, not a Herald-Leader staff writer. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Kentucky Kernel, the University of … Continue reading

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↑1 Correction: Mr Helton may be a male, but he is certainly not a man, something which I expect will be made very clear to him in prison.
↑2 I cannot blame Rayleigh Deaton, the article author, in that she’s an intern, not a Herald-Leader staff writer. She is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Kentucky Kernel, the University of Kentucky’s student newspaper, for which I wrote just a few years after Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable type printing press.
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