Guilty verdict in child-porn case

In what authorities said was the first child-pornography case to go to trial in federal court in 10 years, a jury yesterday convicted a Media man of downloading two images of naked prepubescent girls and trying to download a video of a child having sex.

Roderick S. Vosburgh, 45, who was working toward a Ph.D. and taught history part time at La Salle University, is expected to be sentenced in February. The sentencing guidelines are likely to recommend a prison term of three to four years, officials said.

The jury acquitted Vosburgh of a charge that he destroyed computer evidence as FBI agents banged on his apartment door in February. U.S. District Judge Timothy Savage dismissed a related charge before the case went to the jury.

Child-pornography cases rarely go to trial because the forensic evidence is tough to dispute, and often overwhelming.

This is because authorities, using Internet provider records, can usually trace Web surfers who download pornography through their individual IP (Internet protocol) address. In addition, when authorities seize suspect computers, they usually find almost all the evidence they need - illicit photos on the hard drive, time-stamped with the dates they were downloaded and viewed.

In the Vosburgh case, authorities had alleged that he destroyed most of the evidence when they arrived at his Media apartment, where he lived alone.

Vosburgh was snared as part of a nationwide FBI undercover operation. An agent in San Francisco set up an undercover link that offered downloads of a 4-year-old girl having sex with a man. In October 2006, Vosburgh allegedly downloaded such a file.

In February, when FBI agents and local police arrived at his door with a search warrant, they acted cautiously, they testified, because they believed he legally owned a dozen or more weapons.

Vosburgh didn't answer their knock. For the next 27 minutes, authorities tried to talk him into opening the door.

When authorities finally entered the apartment, they said they found a computer pried open, its hard drive smashed into several parts, strewn elsewhere. They also found smashed thumb drives, one of which lay in the toilet, they said. On an external hard drive, they later recovered hundreds of legal adult pornography images and two illegal images of naked prepubescent girls, agents said.

"The destruction was done that morning, during those 27 minutes," Assistant U.S. Attorney Denise S. Wolf told jurors during closing arguments. "You saw the broken pieces. Now it's time to put them all of them together."

Vosburgh downloaded pornography "because he likes this stuff," Wolf said. "He's the bear going to the hunt."

Defense lawyer Anna Durbin told jurors that Vosburgh, a former police dispatcher, was law-abiding. The government's case was flawed and based on poor science, she said.

"There's no hard evidence that Mr. Vosburgh was after that stuff," Durbin said. The government "can't prove when he destroyed his hard drive."

Vosburgh remains free on bail but is prohibited from contact with children. According to the Collegian, the La Salle newspaper, Vosburgh last year also taught history to inmates at Graterford Prison.