An 18-year-old pedophile at the center of Senate hearings on Ketanji Supreme Court nominee Brown Jackson said he was shocked to see his name on the news but admitted that what he did was “monstrous.”
Wesley Hawkins, now 27, was bustling around D.C. looking for a new job while members of the Senate discussed his case at length in a nationally televised SCOTUS hearing without his knowledge.
He knew Jackson, 51, the judge who sentenced him to three months in prison and 10 years on the sex offender registry for child pornography in 2013, was facing Congress as a Supreme Court candidate after hearing her name several times. in the news. weeks ago.
According to The Washington Post, when he saw her photograph, he immediately realized that it was her, but thought little about it.
Hawkins now does not believe that his case, which was not covered by the local press almost a decade ago, was discussed at the center of the national capitol and his name was spoken before Congress as Jackson came under fire for her lenient sentences for sex offenders. .
Hawkins watched Senate hearings on YouTube for two hours, sitting hunched over and clenching his fists in his shirt as he went through shock and neutrality on Thursday, The Post reported.
Even though he says he’s changed and is no longer “sexually embarrassed”, he doesn’t blame anyone who goes so far as to call him a “monster”.
“If someone heard my name during the verification process, or just saw it on the Internet because they were browsing [sex offender] registry and want to call me a monster, I understand. I don’t blame them for that and to some extent I agree with them, because what I did was a little monstrous,” he told The Washington Post.
“When I got to the point where I could think about what I had done, in retrospect, I felt disgusted. If someone else wants to continue to see me like this, I can’t stop them. But I hope that when people look after a while, they will see that he was just a young man, that he grew up and learned from his actions.
Even though his mother’s worst fears are now coming true and his case is gaining media attention, he told the Washington Post he feels sympathy for Jackson, despite the fact that he is “not very happy that she gave me three months “.
However, “after contemplating in prison”, Hawkins realizes that Jackson gave him a second chance after hearing from “other people who said they got arrested the first time and they got five, six years”.
“I feel like she decided to take into account the fact that I’m just getting started. [in life] and she knew it would hold me back for years, so she really didn’t want to add to it,” he told the Washington Post.
SCOTUS candidate Ketanji Brown Jackson has been criticized for a lenient sentence against sex offenders. One of her first cases as a federal district judge in Washington was Wesley Hawkins in 2013, whom she sentenced to three months in jail, three months of house arrest and six years of parole after he was found with child pornography.
A tear rolls down the cheek of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington.
At the time, Jackson justified her sentence by saying that the sentence was just because it “enables you, Mr. Hawkins, to spend enough time in prison to understand and appreciate the consequences of your actions.”
His case was one of Jackson’s first since the Senate confirmed him as a federal district court judge in Washington in 2013.
At the time, 18-year-old Hawkins, who is gay, was discovered with 17 videos and 16 images of underage boys aged 8 to 12 engaging in various sexual acts after an undercover detective discovered five videos he posted on YouTube. He told the detective that in 2012 he was interested in teenagers from 11 to 17 years old.
He also uploaded 36 child pornography images and videos to his iCloud account when police ransacked his apartment. There were videos of 11- and 12-year-olds having sex, videos of an 11-year-old being raped by an adult male, and videos of an eight-year-old sexual act, just to name a few. .
He pleaded guilty before arraignment, admitted possession to authorities, and also wrote Jackson a letter expressing remorse.
“I cannot say how much I regret what I did,” he wrote in a November 18, 2013 letter to Jackson.
“I have disappointed everyone in my family and everyone who has ever cared for me. I hope I can correct my mistake and that it doesn’t end my life before it starts.”
Hawkins, who wrote a remorseful letter to Jackson in 2013, said he was shocked to learn that his case, which was not covered by the local press at the time, was at the center of Jackson’s candidacy hearings. Also, he doesn’t blame those who call him a “beast” for his actions when he was 18, but hopes that people will see that he has changed.
He also stated in the letter that he would “never commit this or any crime in his life” and pleaded with Jackson to “bless” him with a “second chance”.
Jackson sentenced him to three months in prison, followed by three months of house arrest, six years of supervision and 10 years of registration on the sex offender registry.
Despite her “soft” sentence, the judge acknowledged that Hawkins’ crime was a “very serious” and “terrible crime” but stated that he “poses no risk to children” after a psychological report concluded that no there were reasons. believe that he is a pedophile.
However, at the time, Jackson justified her sentence by saying that the sentence was just because it “enables you, Mr. Hawkins, to spend enough time in prison to understand and appreciate the consequences of your actions … but not so long that you are subjected to harm in prison or be irreparably influenced so that you are forever lost to society,” and that he was not the one who created the images and videos himself.
Republicans are now criticizing her “slap on the wrist” sentence because it was far below the federal standard for sex offenders.
Federal regulations recommend eight to ten years in prison for a sex offense, however prosecutors in the Hawkins case recommended only two years, and the probation officer assigned to the case recommended only a year and a half. Hawkins’ own defense attorney recommended only one day in jail and five years of supervised release, all of which Jackson took into account.
She also took into account the ages of the children and Hawkins’ own age at the time: 18. She viewed the incident as “a situation in which you were fascinated by sexual images that involved, essentially, your peers.”
However, Hawkins was caught again with child pornography in 2019 and had to check into the halfway house for the remaining six months of his supervision by Jackson.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, blamed Hawkins’ short term for his relapse. At the hearing, he said, “I think he got caught again for child pornography, and he wouldn’t have done it if he had served eight to ten years in prison, as required by the guidelines.”
“What was Wesley Hawkins doing in 2019, Judge?” Cotton asked Jackson, who replied, “I don’t remember.”
However, Hawkins did not “re-offend”. He was found to be at “high risk of re-offending” as he “continued to look for sexually arousing, non-pornographic material and images of men between the ages of 13 and 16,” according to a person close to the case.
“As clearly stated in [my court file] it wasn’t because I got offended again, it wasn’t because I did something even illegal,” Hawkins told the Washington Post. “From the treatment I received, they felt that I was at high risk of reoffending.”
When Hawkins was caught, he had just been fired from his three-year job and was “alarmed”.
“I was a troubled young man who had problems with sex,” Hawkins said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I came from a neighborhood and a family that was very disapproving of homosexuality, and I thought I couldn’t go to them because when I come they will say, ‘This is wrong, don’t do it, point-blank. .”
“I went online to other young people who had these images. Here’s how it happened.
The Hawkins case (pictured on the list behind Senator Ted Cruz) was a hot topic in the hearings due to the fact that his sentence was below federal guidelines.
Judges routinely hand down sentences below federal sentencing rules, even Trump appointees have done this on multiple occasions.
The White House claimed that in five of the seven cases, Jackson’s sentences were the same or more severe than the probation service had recommended. Probation services analyze the offender’s past and other factors to recommend tougher or lighter sentences. But in this case, Jackson delivered a much smaller sentence than even the probation service had asked for, angering Republicans.
She noted that Hawkins was an image collector, but like other “spectators” she condemned, “they are not involved, the defendants say. They don’t focus on what’s really going on with the kids.
She noted that in some cases she sentenced individuals involved in child pornography to 25 years in prison.
Senator Ted Cruz, who plans to vote against her, believes that this is not enough.
“If you look at her track record as a federal criminal judge, and especially in cases involving child pornography, over and over again, she delivers incredibly lenient sentences,” Cruz said. “In every single case where she had a discretion in a child pornography case, she delivered significantly lighter sentences than the sentencing guidelines required by the prosecutor.”
“And the Democrats just kept getting upset, saying, ‘How dare you focus on her actual track record?’ You know, I think the American people are concerned about whether we’ll have a Supreme Court judge who follows the law, or we’ll have a Supreme Court judge looking for loopholes to get violent criminals out of prison,’ he said.
“And I have to say that her responses and her notes in this regard were really disturbing,” Cruz said.
Of the 100 sentences handed down to Jackson in his eight years as a trial judge, Republicans focused on seven child pornography cases in which they found her sentences too lenient.
Hawkins now spends most of his day looking for a new job, reading one of his favorite books by a Jamaican writer, and binge-watching his favorite Netflix series, The Last Kingdom.