A
judge sentenced former Subway pitchman Jared Fogle to more than 15 years in
prison on Thursday for trading in child pornography and having sex with
underage prostitutes.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt disregarded
prosecutors’ recommendation that Fogle get 12½ years behind bars, opting for a
stiffer sentence of 15 years and eight months in prison and ordering him to pay
a $175,000 fine. She could have sentenced him to up to 50 years in prison.
In explaining her
sentence, Pratt noted how fortunate Fogle was to land his lucrative deal to be
Subway’s spokesman after losing a lot of weight in college.
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“What
a gift, to have such a professional windfall fall in your lap,” she said,
adding that Mr. Fogle was living a double life for many of those years.”
Before learning his sentence, the 38-year-old father of two
addressed the court, apologizing for the damage he did to his victims and
family and vowing to be a better person when he gets out of prison.
“I
so regret that I let so many of you down,” he told the court.
“I want to redeem my life. I want to become a good, decent
person. I want to rebuild my life,” he said.
Fogle pleaded guilty to one count each of travelling to engage
in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and distribution and receipt of child
pornography, as per a deal he struck with prosecutors in August. The charges
followed a July raid on his suburban Indianapolis home.
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Before
Fogle addressed the court, the two sides called witnesses. Fogle’s lawyers
called John Bradford, a professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who
testified by phone.
Bradford said he analyzed Fogle on Aug. 17, two days before
Fogle agreed to his plea deal, and concluded Fogle suffers from hypersexuality,
mild pedophilia, and alcohol abuse and dependency.
He said he took Fogle’s sexual history, including his sexual
interests and tested him to determine what images caused Fogle to be sexually
aroused. He said Fogle also told him that he had “a fairly extensive
history” of using prostitutes for sex. Under cross-examination, Bradford
said Fogle admitted to paying a minimum of about $12,000 a year for sex.
“He certainly engaged in sex over a significant period of
time. He engaged in that extensively when he was working for the Subway
Corp.”
And Bradford said Fogle told him he had engaged in sex with
minors of 16 and 17 years of age and said that he had a sexual interest in
teenagers.
“He started viewing pornography in college and had a fairly
extensive collection of pornography in college,” Bradford said.
Bradford said Fogle apparently had a compulsive eating disorder
before he lost all of the weight that to him becoming the face of Subway, and
that his hypersexuality seemed to develop shortly after he shed the extra
pounds.
He also said Fogle, whose wife filed for divorce on the day he
agreed to plead guilty, admitted that he occasionally fantasized about
children. “His main interest was in young females and some interest in
adolescent males.”
Bradford said he concluded that Fogle suffered from “mild
pedophilia.”
“I did believe that he did suffer from pedophilia, but it
was pedophilia that did not involve acting out that with a child.”
Bradford said that Fogle told him he had fantasies about
prepubescent females and had masturbated to those fantasies.
“There’s no evidence I have that he actually engaged in
sex” with such children.
In his plea deal, Fogle admitted that had sex at New York City
hotels with two girls under age 18 – one of whom was 16 at the time – and paid
them for that sex. He also acknowledged receiving child pornography produced by
Russell Taylor, the former executive director of The Jared Foundation, a
nonprofit Fogle started to raise awareness and money to fight childhood
obesity.
Authorities said Taylor secretly filmed 12 minors as they were
nude, changing clothes, or engaged in other activities using hidden cameras in
his Indianapolis-area residences to produce child pornography. Taylor has
agreed to plead guilty to child exploitation and child pornography charges.
Prosecutors said in a sentencing memorandum filed last week that
Fogle received photos or videos from Taylor of eight of those 12 youths, and
that some of those images were of girls as young as 12. Fogle could have
stopped Taylor from victimizing some of minors, prosecutors have said, but he
instead encouraged Taylor to produce additional child pornography.
Fogle agreed to pay a total of $1.4 million to his 14 victims,
with each getting $100,000. Before Fogle entered his guilty pleas Thursday, one
of his attorneys told the judge that Fogle had paid 12 of the 14 victims and
turned over the checks for the last two victims before the proceedings began.
Fogle became a Subway spokesman after shedding more than 200
pounds as a college student, in part by eating the chain’s sandwiches.
Subway ended its relationship with Fogle after authorities
raided his suburban Indianapolis home in July.
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