Official pleads guilty to child porn charge

FORT WORTH, Texas -- A former high-ranking Boy Scouts of America official who ran a task force that worked to protect children from sexual abuse pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal child pornography charge.\nDouglas Sovereign Smith Jr., 61, was accused of receiving images over the Internet of children engaging in sex acts. He pleaded guilty to a charge of possession and distribution of child pornography.\nSmith entered his plea without making a deal with prosecutors. "He's willing to accept responsibility. ... Obviously, he wanted to get this behind him," Assistant U.S. Attorney Bret Helmer said.\nSmith's only comments in court were one-word answers to the judge's questions.\n"He is contrite," said Jack Strickland, Smith's attorney. "He has accepted responsibility."\nSmith, who lives in Colleyville, near Fort Worth, faces five to 20 years in prison without parole and up to a $250,000 fine. He remains free until sentencing July 12.\nSmith, who worked for the Boy Scouts 39 years, was a national program director and led the Youth Protection Task Force that worked to shield youth from sexual abuse. But he did not work directly with children, Boy Scouts officials said.\nHe was put on leave last month, immediately after the organization learned of the allegations, and then chose to retire.\nGregg Shields, national spokesman for the Boy Scouts, based in the Dallas suburb of Irving, said Tuesday that the organization was "shocked and dismayed."\n"This is the action of one individual. It certainly doesn't represent our values or mission," Shields said.\nLaw enforcement officials indicated that the pictures did not show boys who were with the Boy Scouts organization, Shields said.\nAuthorities found 520 images of child pornography, including video clips, on Smith's home computer but none on his work computer, Helmer said. There was no evidence Smith had inappropriate contact with children, he said.\nHe received pictures and sent them to other people but did not sell them, Helmer said. Officials don't believe he sent the images to other Boy Scout officials.\nShields said Smith took over the task force two years ago. The task force had been launched in the mid-1980s and soon became widely admired as a model program that provided a Web site, videos, literature and other resources to adults and boys in the scouts, churches and schools.\nThe Boy Scouts have had other problems with their personnel, including volunteers. A California court case in the early 1990s revealed about 2,000 cases of sexual abuse of scouts and other boys that Boy Scouts officials in Irving had documented privately for two decades without telling law enforcement officials.\nSmith's indictment was a result of an investigation launched last year by Operation Kinderschutz, a joint program started in 1997 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and German authorities that investigates child pornography distributed over the Internet.\nAuthorities said they found e-mails containing child porn from Smith on the computer of a German man.