Old video prompts child porn charges

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By Dustin Lemmon | Thursday, July 13, 2006 8:55 PM CDT | () comments

The recent discovery of a 10-year-old videotape showing two teenage girls stepping out of a shower has led to criminal charges for a Clinton, Iowa, man.

John Gool Jr., age and address unavailable, is charged in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Iowa, with three counts of sexual exploitation of children for producing, possessing and receiving child pornography and one count of criminal forfeiture in violation of the exploitation of minors.

The incident was reported to Clinton police after Gool’s ex-wife discovered the videos May 23 and turned them over to the two victims, who are now adults, court records state. They took the videos to Clinton police on May 25.

The ex-wife told police she divorced Gool in 2004. She said the victims and their mother had stayed briefly with her and Gool at their Clinton residence during 1995. At the time, the victims were 15 and 13 years old.

Court documents did not specify how the video camera was concealed to prevent the victims from realizing they were being taped while entering and exiting the shower.

According to court records, a relative found a video of herself getting in and out of the shower in 1996 and destroyed the tape after Gool admitted he had made it. Also, the charges state that she later opened an e-mail addressed to Gool and found a picture of a nude 12-year-old girl.

Police searched Gool’s home in Clinton on June 1 and found compact discs containing images of adolescent and pre-teenage girls who were nude and, in some cases, involved in sex acts, the charges state.

A Clinton police detective interviewed Gool a day later and the man admitted downloading images of girls as young as 10 years from the Internet, according to court records. The charges also state that he told the detective he had downloaded thousands of such images over the past 10 years. According to court records, many of the images were downloaded during the past five years.

Dustin Lemmon can be contacted at (563) 383-2493 or dlemmon@qctimes.com.