Jeremiah “Jay” Salamon, 34, of West springfield was sentenced to 20 years in prison and ordered to pay $300,000 in restitution to two young women who were children when they were abused on film.
An image of Jeremiah "Jay" Salamon taken from his now deleted MySpace account. West Springfield resident Jeremiah "Jay" Salamon was sentenced to serve 20 years in prison on Thursday for possessing a “staggering ... and unprecedented” library of child pornography.
Salamon, 34, owner of “Honey Do Projects,” was arrested by police at a job site in Springfield in 2009 after an FBI agent posing as an Internet troller tapped into his collection.
In the basement of the home where Salamon lived with his parents, investigators mined his laptop during a search and found his files were carefully organized under labels including “pics,” “vids,” “babies” and “bondage.”
Under a plea agreement with prosecutors, Salamon avoided being exposed to a sentence of 30 years to life in prison because of the sheer number - 240,000 files - agents discovered on his laptop and external hard drive. Salamon was sentenced Wednesday to 19 years and 11 months in prison after pleading guilty in December to possessing, advertising and distributing child pornography.
He was also ordered to pay $300,000 in restitution to two young women who were children when they were abused on film.
Defense lawyer Thomas J. Rooke told the judge his client had a “dark side” and became unraveled when his marriage fell apart. He said Salamon is eager to be rehabilitated.
Here is what some of our readers had to say:
iowacowboy says: Anyone who commits a sex crime against a child victim should get mandatory life without the possibility of parole.
venture413 says: First off, I am NOT defending this guy, but I have not seen anywhere that he was involved at all in taking these photos or in the acts that were in them. I agree that just having them is pretty disgusting and wrong (not to mention illegal), but why does our legal system give him 20 years, when I have heard of so many people who actually commit the acts getting no more than 3-5 years? I agree that he is sick and needs to be sent away from society for a good long while, but how are they saying that this is so much worse than the creeps who are out there actually with the children?
Chris_Hunt Dooley_175 says: We bought our house from this guy! I was so glad that by the time we found out what kind of monster he was we'd already moved out of the house - I could never have stayed there knowing about what a sick twisted person he is. I feel ill when I think that I sat across the table from him during the sale. What makes me feel even sicker is that he had kids!! AND he was a foster parent!! It's a terrifying world out there - I hope he never sees the light of day again.
What do you think? Is Salamon's prison sentence fair? Can people with these types of issues be rehabilitated? Visit the original story here to chime in and join the conversation.