A judge sent a former Ansonia man to prison for three years and a day Wednesday on charges he showed pornography to a child at a Shelton Wal-Mart and secretly recorded a 15-year-old girl whose house he was staying at.
Ryan Davies, 22, had pleaded guilty April 3 to charges of second-degree possession of child pornography and risk of injury to a minor. He faced between two and five years behind bars at his sentencing Wednesday.
Davies was arrested by Shelton police in August 2012 after cops said he approached a 10-year-old girl at the Wal-Mart on Bridgeport Avenue and showed her a clip from a pornographic movie on his cell phone.
He told cops investigating the case that wasn’t the first time he had done such a thing, State’s Attorney Kevin Lawlor pointed out in court Wednesday.
“I have done this or attempted to do this around 10 or 15 times when I was working at Wal-Mart to other young girls,” Lawlor quoted Davies as telling police. “I do this because it gets me off when the girl gets shocked and I either masturbate at work or masturbate at home.
“This defendant has some serious issues,” Lawlor said.
Four months after Davies’ arrest in the Shelton case, he once again found himself the subject of a police investigation, this time in Derby, where he was staying at a friend’s house.
Derby detectives were referred to the home by Ansonia cops who had fielded a call from a New Hampshire man who runs a chat room that featured an “open mic lounge.”
The man told Ansonia cops he logged onto the site Dec. 5, 2012 to find a video playing there of a child about 6 to 8 years old naked from the waist down being sexually assaulted by a man.
The New Hampshire man took note of the IP address of the user who put the video on the site and looked it up online.
The man traced the IP address to an AT&T U-Verse account based in Ansonia, but when Ansonia cops followed up on the information, AT&T told them the user was based in Derby.
Derby Police Detective Sgt. John Netto spoke to Davies, who volunteered to cops that when they obtained a warrant to search his computer, they’d find child pornography on it.
He also told cops they’d find voyeuristic videos of the underage girl living at the home who he surreptitiously recorded through a crack in her bedroom door as she changed.
Davies never sexually assaulted the girl, but cops did find three images of child pornography on his computer, as well as two videos depicting child pornography, along with two homemade videos he made of the teen changing clothes.
Lawlor said Davies was unlike most defendants accused of possessing child pornography — who have only a “moderate risk” of offending again — because he “has taken it a step further on multiple occasions.”
“He was actively videotaping someone in his own home,” the prosecutor said.
Lawlor asked Judge Iannotti to hand down the maximum five-year prison term “given the gravity of all these offenses taken together.”
Davies’ lawyer, Public Defender David Egan, responded by pointing out Davies had no prior criminal record and is “fully cognizant of the fact that he has a problem,” and unlike many defendants, is “willing to do whatever is necessary” to address it.
The lawyer also noted that Davies gave voluntary statements admitting his wrongdoing to police in the Shelton and Derby cases.
“He offered them information that they never would have recovered on their own,” Egan said.
That candor continued while his cases were pending in court.
“I wish all clients were as easy to deal with,” Egan said. “He is fully willing to accept responsibility for everything he has done.”
The lawyer also noted that the 15-year-old girl’s mother told a probation official preparing a pre-sentence report in the case that she would prefer Davies get treatment instead of jail time.
But that would be impossible, since second-degree child pornography convictions call for a mandatory minimum prison term of two years behind bars.
“There is just no reason to give Davies any more than the mandatory minimum sentence,” Egan said.
Judge Iannotti responded that the case was more serious than the “typical child pornography case.”
“The difference here is that it involves people present,” he said.
The judge said he would give Davies some credit for being forthright with police, “but I think that because of the factual nature of both cases . . . it’s somewhat more than the mandatory minimum case.”
Judge Iannotti then sentenced Davies to a 10-year prison term to be suspended after three years and a day, to be followed by a 10-year probationary term.
While on probation, the judge ordered Davies to register as a sex offender, have no contact with the victims in the case or any other minors under 16 years old, report any romantic relationships to court officials, and not take any jobs where he would have contact with minors.
Davies had been free on $55,000 bond in the case but was taken into custody after the sentencing to begin his prison sentence. He did not speak during Wednesday’s proceedings.
