MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — The obsession began with adult pornography. It was a slippery slope leading to child pornography and the end of an Air Force career.
Aaron D. Schinbeckler, 26, a staff sergeant with 35th Maintenance Squadron, pleaded guilty in general court-martial to possessing and viewing child pornography, a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s Article 134.
Tuesday’s proceedings were speedy because of Schinbeckler’s guilty plea and his request to be tried before a military judge alone, not a jury of his peers. Less than four hours after court began, Lt. Col. Eric L. Dillow, a military judge out of Yokota Air Base, sentenced Schinbeckler to 12 months in jail, a bad-conduct discharge and reduction in grade to E-1.
Schinbeckler, in a statement before the judge, said he started downloading adult pornography onto his home computer during a troubled marriage.
“Before long, I knew I had an addiction to pornography,” he said. He first downloaded child pornography by accident, he said; he couldn’t view the images before downloading, and a file labeled as adult content actually contained some child pornography. Those first images spawned an interest and he then began to intentionally seek out child pornography by entering Internet search terms such as “pre-teen,” Schinbeckler said in court.
Schinbeckler downloaded and viewed the illegal images on his home computer, first on base and then, after moving, off base, between June 2004 and December 2005. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Misawa seized Schinbeckler’s computer after his now ex-wife mentioned the child pornography during a November 2005 marriage counseling session at Life Skills. (Life Skills counselors are mandated to report knowledge of alleged or suspected crimes.)
Schinbeckler’s defense counsel, Capt. Jonathan Wasden, told Dillow that his client never denied wrongdoing and immediately owned up to his actions after OSI opened an investigation: “When’s the last time anyone saw a case of this nature go to court in nine months?” Wasden asked.
Found on Schinbeckler’s home computer were eight videos of children under the age of 18 engaged in sexually explicit and sexually suggestive conduct, both with other children and adults, according to court testimony. Two of the videos displayed children on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database.
The videos “put still life in motion,” argued Capt. Jared Grimmer for the government. Schinbeckler wanted “to experience what it looked like and what it sounded like.”
Schinbeckler said he felt guilty watching the videos, which he didn’t have to pay for. But “I admit I didn’t realize how serious this crime was at the time,” he told the judge.
In exchange for pleading guilty, Schinbeckler had a pre-trial agreement that capped any jail sentence at 24 months.
In court, he said his future plans include rejoining his parents and new wife back in the States and getting certified as an auto mechanic. His confinement was to start immediately at Misawa, before he’s transferred to a brig in the States. Whether he’ll have to register as a child sex offender after prison depends on his state of residence, said co-trial counsel Maj. Jeffrey Ferguson.
