Child Porn Cop Gets 10 Years, Claims PTSD

Former Police Captain Argues For Shorter Sentence 
The Hartford Courant by Dave Altimari - February 9, 2012 
Says Trauma From His Job Led Him to Child Pornography

The stress and nightmares from years of investigating fatal crashes — coupled with repressed memories of a childhood sexual assault — drove a former Granby police captain to child pornography, his lawyer said. David Bourque, 51, will appear in federal court Friday to be sentenced by Judge Alvin Thompson. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on child pornography charges, including trading images of children as young as 3 years old. In a sentencing memorandum seeking a far lower sentence, attorney Richard Brown argues that Thompson should ignore those guidelines and impose a "fair sentence" for a first offender like Bourque, who has several mitigating factors. Among those factors are that Bourque suffers frompost-traumatic stress disordercaused by investigating hundreds of fatal crashes and also repressed memories of a childhood sexual assault by a family friend. He also noted that Bourque cooperated with authorities in an investigation that led to other arrests. "Going to the scene of the accidents and seeing the victims in horrible shape/condition, including the loss of limbs and young people's lives destroyed became overwhelming,'' Brown said. "While Mr. Bourque is not claiming PTSD blinded him such that he did not know he was violating the law, there can be little doubt that such a condition could impair judgment as one attempts to escape the horror of witnessing such events.'' Bourque has been treated at the Institute of Living ever since he tried to kill himself last April when he realized that federal authorities were investigating him on child pornography charges. He was examined by Dr. Leslie Lothstein, who also treated many of the pedophile priests who were sent to the Institute of Living, who concluded that Bourque did not have the characteristics of a child molester. Lothstein concluded that Bourque is suffering from severe PTSD from witnessing more than 200 fatal accidents and that stress, coupled with harboring a dark secret that he was sexually molested as a boy, drove him over the edge. "While Mr. Bourque is not claiming PTSD blinded him such that he did not know he was violating the law, there can be little doubt that such a condition could impair judgment as one attempts to escape the horror of witnessing such events,'' Brown said.

But federal authorities in their sentencing memorandum said that Bourque used his law enforcement background to help conceal his illegal activity. In fact, they allege that he attended an FBI seminar on child pornography investigations and specifically asked agents after that meeting about how they infiltrate chat rooms and websites that pedophiles frequent. Federal authorities also were not convinced that Bourque had never attempted to molest a child. They made him take a polygraph test when he offered to cooperate with them and he didn't pass it. But Brown said that was because during the seven-hour test, Bourque revealed that he had been sexually assaulted by a family friend while in elementary school. "Any chance to pass the polygraph test faded as he had to deal with the shame and horror of those events,'' Brown said. Brown also will ask the judge to give Bourque credit for assisting law enforcement authorities even before reaching a plea agreement. Bourque gave them all of the passwords to his computer so they could find many of his encrypted files. What they found on those files was more than 26,000 images and videos of child pornography that Bourque had collected. "All are extremely disturbing," prosecutors said in their memorandum, "many of them are horrific." Prosecutors described videos with sex acts involving babies to teenagers. They also said that Bourque participated in several online chats with other pornographers that involved conversations about raping children. Brown said that there was no evidence that Bourque looked at all of the images and that many were sent to him that he never even opened. He said that Bourque has admitted to being interested in images involving 8- to 14-year-old boys. "Excluding trading, there is no evidence that he did anything with these images other than look at some of them over a period of months,'' Brown said. Brown said that Bourque provided valuable assistance to investigators that led to at least three other child pornography arrests since he was caught. 

Added all up, Brown said, he is asking Thompson to ignore the guidelines calling for a 17- to 20-year sentence and to craft a fair sentence on his own, "recognizing that this first offender engaged in this unlawful activity for several months, but for 51 years led an otherwise honest, hard-working life, contributing during his 39-plus years as a police officer to the common good." Bourque worked for 30 years in Suffield before being hired in Granby as a captain, the second-highest position in the department, in January 2010. He was in line to become the next police chief until federal authorities walked into the police station last summer with a warrant to search his computer. Bourque resigned in late June after Granby officials agreed to pay him $30,000, which includes vacation time and accrued sick days. Bourque also was the head of the regional accident reconstruction team that was originally in charge of the crash investigation involving off-duty Windsor Locks police Officer Michael Koistinen, who was driving a car that struck and killed 15-year-old Henry Dang as the teenager rode his bicycle home in October of 2010. But Bourque and his team were removed from the case when it was revealed that no one had given Koistinen a blood-alcohol test to see if he had been drinking before the accident. Bourque was on the scene for less than an hour before leaving and was heavily criticized in an independent review of the police's handling of that fatal accident. daltimar@courant.com


CLICK HERE TO SEE RELATED BACKGROUND STORY, "Police Captain Charged With Marijuana Possession"