I'm Back and Gons is Gone

Just got back from vacation last night and am working my way through any interesting Foreign Service news I may have missed while I was gone (dial-up access does not make for easy web searching, so I didn't bother trying).

This morning I learned that our "friend" Gons Nachman was sentenced for his sexual encounters with children while representing our country overseas in the foreign service. I'm pleased with the outcome. You can read the whole story here, but I have quoted some of it below:

Ex-US diplomat gets 20 years for child porn
By MATTHEW BARAKAT, Associated Press Writer

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - An ex-U.S. diplomat who admitted taping his sexual encounters with teenage girls while stationed in Brazil and the Congo was sentenced Friday to 20 years, the maximum possible prison term.

Gons G. Nachman, 42, had sought leniency, claiming among other things that cultural differences in those countries made sex with teenage girls more acceptable.

But U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee took the unusual step of imposing consecutive 10-year terms for the two counts on which Nachman was convicted.

"I reject out of hand completely the idea that I should take into account cultural differences," Lee said. He said even if such differences exist, Nachman was answerable to U.S. standards and U.S. law while working as a diplomat on embassy grounds.

Nachman pleaded guilty earlier this year to possessing child pornography after admitting he videotaped his sexual encounters while working as a consular officer. He also pleaded guilty to misuse of a diplomatic passport.

The case also included allegations that he pressured attractive female Brazilian visa applicants for sex, though he was not charged with that.

Nachman, a naturalized U.S. citizen who came to the U.S. from Costa Rica when he was 17, admitted that he recorded his sexual encounters with a 17-year-old girl in 2004 and a 14-year-old girl in 2005 while stationed in Kinshasa. One of the tapes was labeled "Congo 2004 Sexual Adventures."

He also admitted recording his sex acts with a 16-year-old Brazilian girl while stationed in Rio de Janeiro in 2006.

[...]

Nachman wept after hearing the sentence. His attorneys had suggested the six months he has already spent in prison would be sufficient.

In court, Nachman apologized to his victims and the U.S. Foreign Service.

"I've had this self-centered streak that has caused me to be where I am," he said.

His apology stood in contrast to letters he wrote after his guilty plea to the Foreign Service director seeking intervention on his behalf. He said he was unfairly targeted because he had been active in the nudist community and threatened to take the story about the "injustice" of his case to the international press.

[...]