LIVINGSTON COUNTY – A professional jet-ski racer and business owner pled guilty to possession of child pornography on Tuesday.
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After an emotional colloquy where he was forced to explicitly admit to having a thumbnail image from a website of a naked small girl exposing her private parts on his personal computer, Derek Fuoco, 27, said before sentencing that he only possessed the child porn in the first place because he himself was abused as a child.
“This whole thing is 15 years in the making, as I was abused since the age of 11,” said Fuoco. “There are people in the community doing much worse things than what I am being convicted of today. With the evolution of the internet, access to pornography is an issue that needs to be addressed at some point.”
Fuoco was sentenced to three months of weekend incarceration at the Livingston County Jail, plus 10 years’ post-release supervision. Though he is a professional jet-ski racer and owns his own business, he will not be eligible for Work Release while in jail, which according to the Department of Corrections allows an inmate to leave a facility for up to 14 hours in any day to work at a job in the community, or gain on-the-job training.
Upon his release, Fuoco will have to follow a lengthy set of strict guidelines, including the Sex Offender Registration Act (SORA) guidelines and report any changes of address or online social media accounts to the Division of Criminal Justice Services. The court anticipates that he will be considered a level 1 sex offender, meaning he is least likely to re-offend.
Some concern was brought up by Fuoco’s attorney, Robert King, because two of Fuoco’s employees may have felonies on their criminal records. It will be up to Fuoco’s probation officer whether he will be allowed to associate with these employees.
Fuoco will also need permission from probation to have a computer, or any pornographic material.
PHOTO CAPTION: Derek Fuoco’s mugshot. Photo courtesy of LCSO.