The 18-year-old pedophile at the center of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's Senate hearing said he was shocked to see...
The 18-year-old pedophile at the center of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's Senate hearing said he was shocked to see his name in the news, but admitted what he did was 'monstrous.'
Wesley Hawkins, now 27, was scurrying around D.C. looking for a new job while Senate members were discussing his case at length in a nationally televised SCOTUS hearing, unbeknownst to him.
He was aware that Jackson, 51 - the judge who had sentenced him to three months in jail and 10 years on the sex offender registry for child pornography in 2013 - was before Congress as a Supreme Court nominee after hearing her name in the news a few weeks ago.
After seeing her picture, he immediately knew it was her but gave the matter little thought, The Washington Post reported.
Now, Hawkins stands in disbelief that his case, which received no local press almost a decade ago, was being discussed at the center of the nation's Capitol and his name was being said before Congress as Jackson received heat for her reported lenient sentences for sex offenders.
Hawkins watched two hours of the Senate hearing on YouTube as he sat hunched over and balling his fists into his shirt as he cycled through shock and neutrality on Thursday, The Post reported.
Despite saying he's a changed man who is no longer 'sexually confused,' he doesn't blame anyone who goes as far as calling him a 'monster.'
'If someone heard my name in that confirmation process or just saw it online because they were looking on the [sex offender] registry and want to call me a monster, I understand. I don’t blame them for that, and to an extent, I agree with them, because what I did was a bit monstrous,' he told The Washington Post.
'When I got to a place that I could think about what I had done, retrospectively, I was disgusted. If someone else wants to continue to see me that way, I can’t stop them. But what I hope is that when people look over time they can see he was just a young man, that he’s grown and learned from his actions.'
Despite that now his mother's worst fears are happening and his case is gaining media attention, he told the Washington Post that he felt sympathy for Jackson, despite not being 'very happy that she gave me three months.'
However, 'after reflection in jail,' Hawkins realize that Jackson had given him a second chance after he was hearing from 'other people who said it was their first time arrested and they got five years, six years.'
'I feel that she chose to take into consideration the fact that I was just getting started [in life] and she knew this was going to hold me back for years to come regardless, so she didn’t really want to add on to that,' he told the Washington Post.
SCOTUS nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson has been hammered on her lenient sentencing toward sex offenders. One of the first cases as a federal district judge in Washington was Wesley Hawkins in 2013, who she sentence to three months in jail, three months home detention, and six years of supervised release after he was found with child pornography
A tear rolls down Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson's cheek during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington
Jackson justified her sentence at the time by saying the sentencing was fair because it 'allows you, Mr. Hawkins, to spend enough time in prison to understand and appreciate the consequences of your actions'
His case was one of the first Jackson dealt with after being confirmed by the Senate as a federal district court judge in Washington in 2013.
At the time, 18-year-old Hawkins, a gay man, was found with 17 videos and 16 images of underage boys - ages eight to 12 - engaging in various sex acts after an undercover detective found five YouTube videos he had posted. He told the detective that he was interested in 11- to 17-year-olds in 2012.
He also uploaded 36 images and videos of child porn to his iCloud account, when police executed a search on his apartment. There were videos of 11- and 12-year-olds committing sexual acts, a video of an 11-year-old being raped by an adult male and a video of an eight-year-old committing a sexual act, to name a few.
He entered a pre-indictment guilty plea, admitted possession to authorities, and also wrote a letter to Jackson expressing remorse.
'I cannot say how much I regret what I have done,' he wrote in the letter, dated November 18, 2013, to Jackson.
'I have disappointed everyone in my family and everyone who has ever cared for me. I hope that I can make up my mistake and that this will not end my life before it starts.'
Hawkins, who had a written a letter of remorse to Jackson in 2013, said he was shocked to hear his case, which received no local press at the time, was at the center of Jackson's nominee hearing. In addition, he doesn't blame those who call him 'monstrous' for his actions when he was 18, but hopes that people see that he has changed
He also stated in the letter that he will 'never do this or any crime ever in my life' and begged Jackson to 'bless' him with a 'second chance.'
Jackson sentenced him to three months in jail, followed by three months of home detention, six years of supervision, and he had to be registered on the sex offender registry for 10 years.
Despite her 'lenient' sentence, the judge admitted that Hawkins' crime was a 'very serious' and 'heinous crime,' but claimed that he did not 'pose any risk to children' after a psychological report concluded there wasn't a reason to believe he was a pedophile.
However, Jackson justified her sentence at the time by saying the sentencing was fair because it 'allows you, Mr. Hawkins, to spend enough time in prison to understand and appreciate the consequences of your actions… but not so long that you will be subjected to harm in prison or introduced to incorrigible influences such that you are lost to society forever,' and that he was not the one to produce the images and videos himself.
Republicans are now slamming her 'slap on the wrist' sentence because it was much lower than the federal standard for sex offenders.
Federal guidelines advise eight to 10 years in jail for a sex offense, however, prosecutors for Hawkins' case only recommended two years and the probation officer assigned to the case only recommended a year and a half. Hawkins' own defense attorney only recommended a day in jail and five years of supervised release, all of which Jackson took into consideration.
She also took into consideration the children's age and Hawkins' own age at the time: 18. She viewed the incident as 'a situation in which you were fascinated by sexual images involving what were essentially your peers.'
However, Hawkins was caught again with child pornography in 2019 and was required to check into a halfway house for the remaining six months of his supervision by Jackson.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, blamed Hawkins' short sentence for his relapse. He said at the hearing: 'I think he got caught with child pornography again, and he wouldn’t have if he had been in prison the eight to 10 years the guidelines called for.'
'What did Wesley Hawkins do in 2019, judge?' Cotton had asked Jackson, who replied: 'I don't remember.'
Hawkins, however, had not 'reoffended.' It was determined he was 'high risk of reoffending,' as he 'continued to seek out sexually arousing, non-pornographic material and images of males 13 to 16 years old,' according to a person close to the case.
'As it clearly states in [my court file] it was not because I reoffended, it was not because I had done anything even illegal,' Hawkins told the Washington Post. 'According to the treatment I was in, they felt I was at a high risk of reoffending.'
When Hawkins was caught, he had just been laid off from a job he had worked at for three years and was 'troubled.'
'I was a troubled young man who was sexually confused,' Hawkins told the Washington Post. 'I came from a neighborhood and a family that was very disapproving of homosexuality, and I thought that I couldn’t come to them because when I did, they would say: "This is wrong, don’t do it, point-blank."
'I went online to other young people who had these images. That’s how it came about.'
Hawkins' case (pictured on the list behind Senator Ted Cruz) has been a hot topic at the hearing due to his sentence being lower than federal guidelines
It is common for judges to inflict a sentence below federal sentencing guidelines, even Trump appointees have done it repeatedly.
The White House has argued that in five of the seven cases, Jackson's sentences were the same as or greater than what the probation office recommended. Probation offices analyze the offender's background and other factors to recommend increasing or decreasing sentences. But in this case, Jackson gave a sentence far less than even the probation office asked for, prompting the Republican ire.
She noted that Hawkins was a collector of the images, but like other 'lookers' she'd sentenced, 'they're not involved, say the defendants. They're not focused on you know, what is actually happening to the children.'
She noted that in some cases she had sentenced those involved in child pornography to 25 years.
Senator Ted Cruz, who plans to vote against her, didn't think that was enough.
'If you look at her record as a federal judge in criminal cases and particularly cases concerning child pornography over and over and over again, she gives incredibly lenient sentences,' Cruz said. 'In every single case where she had discretion a child pornography case, she gave dramatically lower sentences than the sentencing guidelines provide for, and that the prosecutor asked for.'
'And the Democrats just kept getting upset, saying, "How dare you focus on her actual record?" You know, I think the American people are concerned whether we'll have a Supreme Court justice that's going to follow the law, or we're going to have a Supreme Court justice that is looking for loopholes to let violent criminals out of jail,' he said.
'And I've got to say, her answers and her record in this regard were really concerning,' Cruz said.
Of Jackson's 100 sentencings over eight years as a trial judge, Republicans focused in on seven child porn cases where they viewed her sentences to be too lenient.
Hawkins now spends most of his days looking for a new job, reading one of his favorite books by a Jamaican novelist, and binge-watching his favorite Netflix series The Last Kingdom.
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