A pedophile convicted of heinous crimes including the production of child pornography fainted in a Rhode Island courtroom as he was jailed for 260 years.
Thomas Goodman, 45, collapsed onto a table inside the Providence courtroom on March 22 as a judge announced a sentence 160 years longer than prosecutors had called for, according to the Providence Journal.
U.S. District Court Judge John J. McConnell handed down the sentence, according to a statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Rhode Island.
Prosecutors said Goodman had admitted to producing child pornography involving prepubescent children on multiple occasions over a period of more than ten years.
Goodman also admitted to having had sexual contact with at least three prepubescent females, according to the statement.
In the course of the investigation, detectives found that at least 62 of the videos and 135 of the images of child pornography Goodman produced involved young children. Investigators determined Goodman created the pornographic material between September 2007 and February 2018, according to the attorney’s office.
Judge McConnell ruled Goodman must serve out the 260-year sentence in a federal prison.
‘Vast Quantity of Child Pornography’
The pedophile was caught after images were found on his phone when it was confiscated by his employer—a submarine manufacturer, the attorney’s office said.
Goodman had violated policy by using the phone on company property, prompting a review of its contents.
“While conducting a search of the phone, Electric Boat Security discovered a vast quantity of child pornography,” the attorney’s office said. “A forensic examination of his electronic devices, and interviews with the defendant, determined that Goodman possessed approximately 7,800 images and 370 videos of child pornography.”
In addition to the jail sentence, Goodman must also pay a fine of $5,000 on each of the nine counts he pleaded guilty to, as per the Justice for Victims Trafficking Act.
Goodman pleaded guilty to the horrific abuse in October 2018.
Study Suggests Child Abuse Might Alter DNA
A Harvard study based on a sample of 34 men—22 of whom had suffered abuse as children—seems to indicate that child abuse can change the victim’s DNA.
The study also suggests that the DNA changes could be passed on to the offspring of the victims.
Harvard researcher Dr. Andrea Roberts and others conducted a long-term study, coordinated by Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health, to look for the possible effects of child abuse on victims’ genetic material. The results, published in the journal Translational Psychology, show a strong link between abuse and DNA alteration.
“We already know there are a lot of behavioral mechanisms by which trauma has negative effects on the next generation,” Roberts told The Independent.
“Trauma obviously really affects the behavior of people traumatized. It often makes them depressed, it gives them post-traumatic stress disorder, and those mental health conditions affect their parenting and affect the kids. This is another possible pathway,” she said.
Roberts said that while the findings of the research were significant, they were preliminary. Even though the sperm cells of child abuse victims are altered, it is unclear whether or how the resulting offspring might be affected.
“When the sperm meets the egg, there is a massive amount of genetic reshuffling, and most of the methylation is at least temporarily erased,” Roberts explained. “But finding a molecular signature in sperm brings us at least a step closer to determining whether child abuse might affect the health of the victim’s offspring.”
Roberts has also studied the effect of childhood abuse on women and the likelihood that women abused as children gave birth to autistic children.
Epoch Times reporter Chris Jasurek contributed to this report.
