Utah Professor Charged With Watching Child Porn On Flight To Boston

November 28, 2011 12:58 PM

Grant Smith in East Boston District Court Nov. 28

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BOSTON (CBS) — A professor at the University of Utah pleaded not guilty Monday to charges he viewed child pornography on his laptop during a flight from Salt Lake City to Boston.

WBZ NewsRadio 1030′s Karen Twomey reports

47-year-old Grant Smith of Cottonwood Heights, Utah was arraigned in East Boston District Court. Bail was set at $75,000.

If he is released, Smith will not be allowed to have any contact with children without supervision.

State police say Smith was sitting in first class on a Delta flight Saturday afternoon when another passenger saw the pornographic images and alerted the flight crew.

The passenger also e-mailed a relative and asked them to call police.

Investigators say he began to erase the files after the flight attendent told him to shut off his computer.

State troopers met Smith after the plane landed at Logan Airport and took him into custody.

Police say they found several disturbing files on his laptop, including photos of children, mostly girls, ranging from 5-to-14 years old.

Smith has been charged with possession of child pornography. He was also ordered to stay off the Internet, unless it’s for business purposes.

Smith is a divorced father of two young children. He is a professor of material science and engineering and an adjunct professor of chemical engineering at the University of Utah.

Prosecutors say his laptop was purchased with grant money.

Smith does not have a criminal record, but prosecutors said Monday he admitted to police that he has traded pictures of teens over the Internet.

State police spokesman David Procopio issued this blistering statement about the arrest Sunday.

In the view of the State Police, child pornography is a form of child sexual abuse–nothing less. Those who possess it — a crime unto itself — foster an evil network that sexually abuses and exploits children irreparably.

Stopping child pornographers is a critical part of our mission to protect children. Along with our federal and local partners, we execute dozens of warrants related to this wicked crime each year. One hopes there is a special place in Hell for the evil people who make, trade, and possess child pornography. Until they get there, we are committed to putting them in jail.

Smith is due back in court December 27th.

WBZ-TV’s Sera Congi reports

Utah Professor Charged With Watching Child Porn On Flight To Boston

48

So fed up with perverts and degenerates. Throw the book at him and anything else within reach.

gramps

This will hurt his chances @ ever teaching @ ‘Penn State & Syracuse’……

gramps

bill.1942

Probably not.
WE ARE THE PERVS WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

Hey, that’s just how we roll at http://www.Indoctrinate-U.com

LIBERALISM: It’s For The Children.
Bawanna

Are you kidding ? The acadamia nuts will make him King or at least HEAD !
Shannon

Shut up.
So sick of people throwing great colleges under the bus because of the alleged crimes of some men.
And….if you were really appalled at the alleged crimes, you wouldn’t make jokes or snide remarks. It’s only an opportunity for people like yourself to dig at the particular college or higher learning institutions in general.
Pretty pathetic and transparent.
muddahen

Why isn’t the empty suit not applying his logic to the universities that he did to the the gulf oil companies? One oil well has an accident in the gulf and we shut down everything. Are our kids less important than the gulf?
To follow the logic of the empty suit, we need to shut down all of the universities until we can be assured that this is not a common problem for ALL universities.
Will

Hey Shannon. It is not us diddling with the kiddie porn and the children. It is your holier-than-thou professors and sporting heroes that discredit these “great colleges” ….in the name of the institutions they serve….while on the payroll which in most cases is taxpayer money. You are beating on the wrong people, so I have no sympathy for your thin skin.
gramps

Shannon, aka. ‘PC’ princess, you forgot to include all the people who ‘covered’ this mess up, if you’re so inclined, count them!

“A fish rots from the head down” & ‘Happy Valley’, smells more like ‘Death Valley’….

Your reference to today’s ‘higher learning institutions’ is laughable…..A high school education received in the 50′s & 60′s,’TOPS’, the ‘sheepskin’ hanging in your ‘cubicle’s of today!……..

Today/tomorrow Congress will be Considering Ways to Boost Foreign Worker Numbers (green cards), in science & engineering…..

If the system & institutions you defend are so wounderful & doing their job, there would be ‘fewer’ green cards….

Put your ‘PC’ness’ where the sun don’t shine….Your political correctness is one of the biggest problems facing this country.

America was a better place when we all knew how to laugh at ourselves & ‘Archie Bunker’…. as he pointed out our weaknesses every week…..

Imagine all the TV shows that could no longer be made today……If Sheriff Taylor were to take ‘Opie’ to the wood shed today, Barney would have to arrest him….I remember when the ‘Mouseketeers’ graduated from Disney to do beach movies…. Now they go from Disney to the tabloids….

I remember when teachers were in charge….

The ability to laugh & joke, is a blessing….

gramps

gramps

This will hurt his chances @ Ever teaching @ ‘Penn State & Syracuse’….

gramps
jim

Buggery and pedophilia have been around since the dawn of man. Good vs evil; the battle never ends only the technology changes.

Marine72

At least in Barney F BOHICA’s case we know of 71 years of the “around since the dawn of man” time of a$$hole buddies.

Wilhelm The Sad

And I am pretty fed up with a law where if “someone receives and email” didn’t ask for it didn’t pay for it…but it has something in it, like child porn (as far as they know) it is a felony and they, the law, can destroy someone’s life…even though they the person receiving the email…didn’t do anything other than receive an email….
This is Stalinism to the extreme

Megaflunky

If you read it completely is stated he hand more than one image and tried to remove them after getting seen looking at them. He is a sick-o and needs to be charged.
rufus levin

megaflunky….just askin…..who got harmed from him looking at whatever he chose to look at? Not who got upset or offended by WHAT HE WAS DOING. Like this is a lynch mob…..my god, tsa gropes you to fly, passengers go whacky from what they watch YOU do, and everyone calls the law, who become immediate judge and jury and without any trial, the guy get his private life ruined. This nation is getting creepy.
jaques5

@rufus levin–the kid he was enjoying looking at, stupid.idiot. thanks fer askin’
Drew the Happy

Wilhelm, you truly are sad
Doug

I have never received a kiddie porn email. How many have you received you pervert?
rufus is a doofus

Rufus, are you really this stupid? Children are harmed when they are sexually exploited by being used in child pornography. The demand for child pornography, which is created when people want to get the images and look at them, encourages the creation of more child pornography. Therefore, we need laws against having child pornography to deter people from getting it, which will lead to less children being abused. Get it now?

Also, viewing child porn may actually make some people go out and abuse children themselves. Understand that?

It is amazing how this world survives when people as dumb as you are voting.

And I have flown several times in the past year. No TSA agent has ever laid a hand on me. All the hoopla about the TSA is pure exaggeration.
Hopeless in America

rufus levin… you are the creep in this room – don’t kid yourself, if you can’t see the wrong in what that proff was doing then you are part of the problem.

The statement, “Our Children are the Future”, is an obvious fact of life. The question is, what kind of future will our children fashion for themselves and those of us who subject to that future world?

Here’s another principle and fact of life to help answer the obove question:

If you sow the wind you will reap the whirlwind.

Ask any farmer about sowing seeds and the harvest they reap – that’s the positive side from which the metaphor was taken.

We are looking at a generation of monsters incubating in the laboratory that is our declining society. Rascals raising hoodlums raising sociopaths; and in the next twenty years that future generation will make the current crop of miscreants look like boy scouts.

Which are you Rufus, the lab rat or the guy in the white suit?
Tammy

Rufus Levin….

the children in the photos were harmed. Their photos were explicitly child pornography, distributed for the enjoyment of pedophiles. They were harmed. It’s that simple.
Karl Magnus

Thank you for stating that unpopular position, Wilhelm. I agree.
Even a simple mouse click or two can get you 10 years in prison. As usual, we have gone overboard in enforcing a law that has a myriad of unintended consequences.
It’s the producers who should be targeted and put away forever.
~(Ä)~
Tim

You are kidding, right? If someone receives an email with an attachment that is child porn then they have an obligation to take it to the police so that the police can arrest the pervert that sent the email. The police will know if the person receiving the email is telling the truth by an examination of the hard drive and the email account. Something tells me your last name is Sandusky.
ohyan

You’re an idiot! That’s not what happened here. If you’re receiving such things there’s a reason. If you did get the one call your local police. But you see you did not think of that did you?? I wonder why……………….

String him by the Nuts

A pervert professor traveling first class. I always wondered who had the money to purchase first class tickets. Perhaps that was grant money as well.
G.T.

I don’t think that stat applies to engineering professors.
Fu Manchu

What G.T. said.

And do you really think calling them “DUMOCRATS” helps your cause at all? Don’t you realize it just serves to make you, and those like you, look like imbeciles?
American Patriot

In Utah? Not a chance you f***ing idiot.

John

What is it about our society that seems to be spawning this type of behavior at increasing rates.

scott

he was looking at images of girls….. nothing GAY about that… just sick and disgusting…. Think before you type the next time Bubba…..

Japes Macfarland

He had images of 5 year olds on his computer, and admitted to “trading images” of teenagers. It sounds worse than just careless browsing.

Plymouth Patriot

Normalization of the behavior through the internet. One guy acting on his own might have limits. Connecting these individuals through the internet brings them together and provides a support group.

fr3113d

Plymouth, a friend of mine says this about the increasing rates. When his father was a kid, maybe 60 years a go, there was a man living on his street that was molesting his three daughters and no one said anything about it. Today it’s front page news. He feels that the world is becoming a better place because it’s becoming harder every day for evil to hide. These behaviors have always been there. It’s just now it’s easier to hold the criminals accountable. I think he’s right on this.

zombierocket

What is it in society? Well, just look at the examples we all have. President charged with rape, another president accused of drug use, another president selling cocaine as a young man, and don;t even get me started with Barney Frank…

ARREST THE KENYAN OCCUPIER OF 1600
Nye, Eve

Do you mean to say that Clinton wasn’t a real gynecologist, and that cigars are not medically necessary instruments for use in female pelvic examination procedures?
Japes Macfarland

The reporter who covered the Juanita Broderick story changed her political affiliation afterwards. I’ll never forget that 60 minutes interview, and would bet my life that it’s true. An actual rapist was our President. Obama is probably not much better, if not worse from what I’ve heard.

kb

You have to ask? 60+ years of liberal decay!

LarryG

You nailed it.
jim

Yes, you nail that one kb. Unfortunately, the way things are going this may just be another…”he/she was born that way” trend.

Want to feel ill then google the North American Man Boy Love Association…just typing that makes me ill.

Be aware.
george

Yep! Just look at what passes for comedy on today’s TV sitcoms, or the sordid lyrics that kids today hear on the MP3 players they never remove from their ears. And, last but hardly least, look at the examples that are set by our politicians, including certain presidents and the gentleman from Massachusetts who announced today his intention to retire from Congress.
Barry 0

I know… google is one sick oranization.
TM

Yeah, kids didn’t get molested back in the old days….especially not the girls married off at age 12, huh? Another conservative with no concept of history.

Morgan

I think we’re just aware of it at increasing rates.

These people always exist. Albert Fish and HH Holmes were in the late 1800s and would still shock anyone a century later.

And our first overseas war was essentially over a particularly sexually attractive 12 year-old that was kidnapped.

None of this is new, or, in my opinion, increasing.
George Johnson

It’s the disease of liberalism.

It’s destroying us. It’s insidious. It’s teaching down the morals of this country, little by little. Little by little, everything that was one bad, is slowing becoming “acceptable” now.
It’s not that any one liberal has come out in favor of this, it’s their attitude about crime and morals and responsibility all together. It’s just chipping away at everything, for the past 70 years or so.

Ruth

Right On!!!
lynda

yeah, just like another liberal so many folks love: JESUS!
get a grip, George. More conservative political REPUGS have been caught up with this sort of thing.
Garry

Sadly mistaken if you think Jesus was the same as a modern liberal. Not even close.
Jim

Jesus was an unemployed Liberal Jew.
Eve

This is not about political parties.This is about horrible people like this guy who have been around since civilization began continuing to hurt innocent children for their sexual pleasure.
This is about being a decent human being and being appalled by this guy and others like him hurting children.It doesn’t have to do with the war between political parties.
Guess what,you know what’s destroying us, It’s people who don’t care about others,who hurt others for their own gain,who don’t have empathy or sympathy,who are complete hypocrites,who blame people different than them for all their problems,who hate others for their differences,and who don’t use logic and common sense.

*PEACE AND LOVE MY FRIEND*:)

I-RIGHT-I

Oh, that’s an easy one. Once you throw God out the door of your nation everything goes to hell. Wall St., K Street, and all of DC is totally infected with self worshiping heathen. This pervert is just the tip of the iceberg in acedemia today.

rufus levin

wow….bring back witchburning and the inquisition to determine what is REALLY below the tip of that academic iceburg of total perversion.
Turban

Witches weren’t burned in the colonies. They were hung, as well they should be.

Barry

Welcome to the Obamanation of unchecked liberalism.

Jim

Yes, because we all know paedophilia never existed before Obama became president.

You people are bona fide morons. Go back to shovelling lard in to your faces and watching Hannity.

GozieBoy

The Age of Bubba seems to have clearly accelerated us along the path of Sodom and Gomorrah. The loony left co-conspirators and complicit MSM said it was “only about sex”, thus no harm – no foul. But what was forgotten was that we know that Bubba exposed himself upon an innocent and unwilling woman; that a recently widowed woman went to see President Bubba in the White House for a job to support her family, and was promptly and unwillingly groped; that Bubba was accused of rape (with graphic details from a very convincing woman who wanted nothing to gain from it). Those are only the most famous ones we know about – and like Sandusky, there must be dozens more. But Bubba, like Barney, remains a hero amongst the degenerate left.

Stasmi

Yes, because the yuppies of Reagen’s 80′s were all God-fearing, moralistic, family people, right?

Loosey

Yeah, but he hates America and votes democrat. Let’s give him a Nobel prize.
DJ Ruden

Hell is for children.
Bob

Another left wing pervert.

zombierocket

Teachers, priests, coaches, professors, Congressmen… . do ya think we’re a SICK society? Yup, we sure are.

KarenK

They come from all walks of life and the incidence of pedophilia is no higher in any particular profession. As Plymouth Patriot observed, the internet has simply made it a lot easier for these people to get hold of this stuff.
George Johnson

WRONG KarenK.

Pedophiles go where the kids are. And where is that?? SCHOOLS!!

There’s more child rape going on in our government (and private) schools than in any church. The internet simply makes it easier to obtain such images, but it’s always been there.
RUFUS LEVIN

BUT THEY ALL HAVE JOBS!!!!!!

Glenn

Left wing? Seems awfully right to me. Abusing the less powerful, poor and sick is what the right does. Is anyone surprised they abuse children? I don’t think so.

Two within a month. Both from VERY conservative institutions. You do the math.

Shannon

Penn State is anything but conservative. It’s on the top ten list for Gay friendly campuses, has a sex fest week that would make Larry Flynt blush and has over 800 clubs that cater to any one’s proclivities.
Most of the Profs consider themselves dems/liberal.
As to Syracuse, I’m sure it’s not conservative either.
There are very few ‘conservative’ campuses in this country.

Where did you get your info?
Glenn

Shannon, Penn St is VERY conservative and it’s in a very conservative part of Pennsylvania. Joe Paterno was a very active Republican and spoke in favor of George Bush. Sandusky was also registered Republican.

Likewise, any place in New York state that isn’t New York City is either moderately conservative or very conservative. People think New York is a very blue state but half the state legislature is Republican.

Jeff

Let me guess…….it was “Research” or lets cry “Academic Freedom”!
Templar X

Sodomy, Child Rape, and Pedophilia in High Places: http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2011/11/12/a-reading-list/
LSanders

Vomit
rch46

A college professor huh, why am I not surprised.

zombierocket

Add coaches, priests, congressmen, teachers… all de facto leaders in our society. We are so deep in trouble.

Seen It Before

When I was in H.S. in the 80′s, we had a coach who came to work there after being run out of another H.S. 30 miles away for banging an under-age girl. Guess what happened? He did it again. We had a Baptist preacher/teacher who went to prison for banging an under-age girl. My shop teacher was fired after being caught with another man in a park(I always thought he was a little too friendly at the time, he later died of Aids) . My best friend wanted to kill the band teacher who was banging his girlfriend, who was also under-age at the time. Guess how he got fired. That’s right, another under-age girl, move to the “head” of the class. Schools are absolutely full of sex predators, and the only one I saw prosecuted and jailed was the preacher. The rest were allowed to leave quiety. The preacher could have, too, but he kept violating the restraining order the girls parents had on him! No Joke. This was a small school, my class was only around 90 graduates. I can imagine in a big school a teacher could get away with it for years and years.

ECH

The recent and nasty problem with Penn State is obviously not limited to Penn State. There is great hypocrisy going on if we think these are isolated incidents. How many college profs, et al.,, as examples, secretly view porn, which acts as fuel, and an antecedent, to the sodomy scandals in the sports world? This scourge is getting blatant. Yet such porn liberties go unhindered and unchecked.
Why are we surprised that such ugly incidents arise when the gay lobby keeps growing in its power, and the porn industry and its influence keep expanding?
P

Quite a statement from the State Police

RUFUS LEVIN

SAME BUNCH THAT GAVE TEDDY KENNEDY A PASS FOR DROWNING A YOUNG WOMEN .

THEY ARE ALL UNION IRISH COPS PAID VIA BROWN PAPER BAG.

rch46

OK, Mr. Pedophile.
hollywoodron

Mankind will never end sin. But justice must always be vigilant.

REF

Excellent point.

There sure are a lot of sanctimonious finger-pointers out there, accusing everyone and anyone.

But in the final analysis, there is not one single person AT LEAST CAPABLE of committing such a crime. Thankfully many, if not most, have something called a moral compass that prevents them from crossing that line from legal to illegal.

Or for those not so easily offended or sanctimonious: from grace to sin.

Col Bill Kilgore(RET)

He’s got tenure Right?
ex-infantry

I certainly hope you’re being sarcastic
Pilot.Dave

He’s going to have lots of fun in prison !!! Funniest part was “deleting” files. He’s not smart enough nor did he have enough time to get every single one. Windows has so many places such files are kept… and they don’t actually get deleted. Takes only a few minues to “un-delete” them.

Just remember, places like Pakistan this is normal behavior.
SS

This guy looks like Dahmer’s brother. Scary
eumple

your stimulus tax dollars at work
J.V.

Did he play football at Penn State?

Shannon

Again, another ignorant comment to take a dig at a college.
Of course you know the players had nothing to do with the alleged crime that was purported to have happened by an ex coach….right?

If you were really appaled by pediphilia you wouldn’t make snide remarks.
It’s comments like yours that are truly disturbing.

Dan Spot

This is the problem with college. Our founding fathers didn’t need anything past high school, nor does most of the rest of the world.

Our so-called places of “higher” learning are just cesspits of immorality and backwards thinking, and it’s unconscionable that our tax dollars support them.

Although they should keep the football teams. We like our football.

Clearhead

You’re right, Danny boy. Everything most of us need to know, we learned in kindergarten.
Stasmi

And that’s why there are 2 kinds of Republicans…the millionaires who have all the power and cringe at the other kind…the uneducated Christian conservatives, who have successfully hijacked the Republican party.
Shannon

Yikes, most of our Founding Fathers were highly educated, Lawyers or Officers.

George Johnson

The Catholic Church scandals are NOTHING compared to the child abuse that goes on in our government school system. The libs would LOVE for you to forget about this as they try to re-write history.

But let me guess, this liberal professor was doing “research”….
Bob Lee

IF would help if there were a universal age limit for young people to have sex.
18 is ridiculous, and other states, it’s too low. You have 19 year old boys being accused of statutory rape of their 17 year old girl friends in some states.

That’s insane. This would also allow teenagers above legal age to sell their image…naked or otherwise. Perverts could view legal teenagers. Remember when Denmark made pornography legal, sex crimes fell.

I believe that people who molest children (before puberty) deserve a special place in hell. Meanwhile we monitor them for life unless locked up.

George Johnson

THIS guy, was 47 years old! What are you talking about?? How does this relate to the story? (answer, it doesn’t)

Bob Lee

Well, thanks George, It saves me the trouble of answering. Most of so called child pornography is neither. You have to define the age childhood ends. Nature does it at puberty. States and countries have their own ages.

At one point NYC lowered the age to 16. A cunning photographer starting selling pics of teenage boys in the nude…alone. However, outside of NYC, it was a felony to possess a magazine with those legal (at the time) photos.

If a 14 year old girl sends a 14 year old boy a nude picture of herself…she has produced child pornography, and he has possession of it.

So George how long should be lock up those criminals? Now do you see why we need a consistent age for the pornography laws to be effective? For example, what state was he flying over at the time?
Your Mom

Actually, no, a nude picture of a 14 year old is not child pornography. Nudity in and of itself is not pornography. There must be sexual activity in the image for it to qualify.

Roberts

Some of the questions is how much and kind of contact did he have with young children/teens in course of position at the university and if anyone else in the hierarchy were aware of the situation. Who else was he associated with and exchanging such images? Was he in any way involved in production of such? It would seem that indications in recent accusations of actual contact, the university hid such “offenders” within the university/college reporting/investigatory/disciplinary system. Time to remove the veil.
LarryG

Then they should be shipped to the Aleutians along with all of the drug dealers and other human garbage and left to fend for themselves.