A former SEPTA cop who watched and shared child porn - sometimes while on duty - sentenced to 12 years in federal prison
Brian Zenszer's crimes were "very, very grave, and indeed abonimable," U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III said.
A former SEPTA police officer who watched, shared, and sent messages about child pornography, sometimes while on duty, was sentenced Tuesday to 12 years in federal prison.
Brian Zenszer, 44, of Warminster, pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges stemming from his use of the messaging app Kik to solicit and view sexually explicit or abusive photos and videos of children, some of them prepubescent.
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III on Tuesday called Zenszer’s crimes “very, very grave, and indeed abominable.”
And although Zenszer was not accused of abusing any children himself, Bartle said his decision to share videos of children being violated was nonetheless terribly harmful.
“There are a lot of young girls out there who may likely be scarred emotionally and psychologically for the rest of their lives,” Bartle said. “We may never know the extent of what you have done.”
Zenszer told Bartle he was “eternally sorry” for his actions. At the time he was viewing and sharing the materials last year, he said, he was suffering from intense depression and post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by a 17-year career as a police officer.
He said he believed at the time that seeking psychiatric help would have been a sign of weakness, so he turned to online chatrooms as a way to escape the trauma and despair he was witnessing on the job — and eventually began searching for “more and more harmful things.”
“It was like I was feeding an addiction of misery,” he said.
His mother and girlfriend told Bartle they also believed his crimes were the result of untreated mental health issues caused by his job, and said they viewed him as remorseful, ashamed, and capable of moving beyond those actions in the future.
Bartle, however, said the crimes deserved a significant punishment, even if Zenszer may be unlikely to reoffend.
“It’s truly a tragic situation,” he said.
Zenszer was a veteran SEPTA officer assigned to foot patrols throughout the city’s transit system when he was arrested last year and charged with crimes including distribution and possession of child pornography. He was fired after being charged.
Federal authorities accused him of using Kik to solicit, share, and discuss dozens of files of children being abused, and prosecutors quoted him in court documents sending crude messages seeking increasingly disturbing videos.
Zenszer admitted during an initial interview with police that he was the person behind two Kik accounts they discovered with explicit materials, and told them that some of his activity occurred while he was at work. He said in court Tuesday that “some of the things I said did not even sound like me.”
Zenszer pleaded guilty in April, and has been in custody since the time of his arrest.