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Royal Oak youth gymnastics photographer faces prison time in child pornography case

By Hudson Brooklyn Oct 17, 2024

Royal Oak youth gymnastics photographer faces prison time in child pornography case

A Royal Oak youth photographer convicted of distributing child pornography spent two decades taking pictures of the bare feet and genital areas of children in leotards and cataloging the images in folders containing the real names of children, according to federal court records around 1,100 gymnasts stood.

A memorandum filed by prosecutors in the case against photographer David Yellen reveals for the first time the extent of a scandal that erupted last year after FBI agents traced child pornography to a computer in Yellen’s home. The Yellen case comes to a conclusion Friday as prosecutors are expected to ask Chief U.S. District Judge Sean Cox to sentence Yellen, 59, to nearly 16 years in federal prison.

Yellen is portrayed in court papers as a predator with a foot fetish who, at the same time as former Michigan State University doctor and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, victimized children as young as 3 in the country’s gymnastics community. Nassar, 61, was accused of sexually abusing more than 500 young women, teenagers and prepubescent girls over more than two decades under the guise of medical treatment and is serving a life sentence.

Yellen has amassed a library of more than 2 million photos and 26,000 videos – a significant portion of which, according to the government, was child sexual abuse material. The government said Yellen downloaded “a massive amount” of child pornography during that time.

At the same time, Yellen befriended athletes at local gymnastics academies and national competitions, posing as a harmless friend in what prosecutors described as a toxic community full of coaches and instructors who belittled, verbally abused and emotionally abused girls.

“Yellen donned sheep’s clothing and gained the trust of girls who were too young and too innocent to view his apparent kindness as a strategic tactic to gain access to their lives for his own benefit,” the U.S. deputy wrote. Prosecutor Sarah Alsaden.

Yellen never denied his guilt or responsibility for an addiction to pornography, his lawyer Margaret Sind Raben wrote in an email to The Detroit News. She noted that Yellen passed an FBI lie detector test that asked whether he had sexual contact with a child, took nude photos of a child or engaged in sexual activity with a child as an adult.

“David answered ‘No’ to each of these questions,” his attorney wrote.

“Despite (the government’s) efforts and insistence that David poses a risk of physical harm to children… that he is ‘Larry Nassar Lite’ or ‘Larry Nassar II’… there is no evidence that David ever acted.” “against a child,” Raben added. “The idea that someone who possesses child pornography poses a serious risk of actually harming a child is emotionally understandable, but is not supported by any research.”

The photos of the gymnasts’ clothed genital areas were not child pornography, his attorney said.

“They are considered children’s erotica,” Raben wrote. “In the United States, it is not a crime to possess/distribute child erotica. The (government) knows the difference.”

“David’s Turner private files have NEVER been accessible to others and will be destroyed by federal officials when his case is closed,” she added.

Yellen is scheduled to serve five months after pleading guilty to distributing child pornography.

He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years after admitting to making child pornography files available on an online peer-to-peer network. As part of a plea agreement, Yellen admitted to possessing more than 600 images of child pornography, including photos of prepubescent minors and sadistic and masochistic images.

A fixture in the gymnastics scene

The Yellen investigation represents one of the most extreme cases in a region that has a large concentration of federal child pornography convictions. Locally, at least 255 people have been convicted and sentenced on federal child porn charges since 2015 — the 10th-largest number in any federal judicial district in the country, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Yellen was a fixture in the gymnastics scene and worked as a photographer for youth gyms for at least 15 years. He commissioned various academies and gymnastics centers in Michigan and across the country to photograph competitions and practices. Yellen also filmed training videos and judged competitions.

“But Yellen was not content with taking photographs for official purposes. “He used his position as a gymnastics photographer to photograph gymnasts when they weren’t looking,” the prosecutor wrote.

The academy where Yellen worked is not named in the court filings. But Facebook posts indicate that Yellen took photos and videos at various academies, including the Michigan Elite Gymnastics Academy in Novi.

Kim Tanskanen, owner of the Michigan Elite Gymnastics Academy, said through a spokesman last year that her gym and a second facility, Grand Blanc Gymnastics Company, had contracted with Yellen for photography services. This relationship lasted about 12 years.

After Yellen’s arrest, Tanskanen said in the statement: “In light of this information, he will not provide services to our gym in any way in the future.”

“According to the FBI’s investigation into Yellen, there is no evidence to date of child sexual abuse images involving children at this gym,” she added.

According to the government, Yellen eventually began spending more time with gymnasts, lounging on mats during practice, visiting gyms on days off and providing what the gymnasts described as a positive, calming presence.

“None of the adults in the gym stopped this behavior, even though they acknowledged that Yellen’s behavior was ‘strange,'” the prosecutor wrote.

How the suspect was discovered

Yellen was indicted in June 2023, a day after FBI agents searched his home and announced an investigation that would begin in early May. At that time, an agent conducting an investigation related to BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing program, identified 14 files containing suspected child pornography.

The FBI subpoenaed the internet provider and traced the IP address to Yellen’s home, court records show.

The agent has downloaded the files. Two images showed prepubescent women with their genitals exposed to the camera, and two other photos showed prepubescent, half-naked girls in sexually suggestive poses, the government said.

Yellen did not understand how the BitTorrent program worked and that it was automatically uploaded from his computer, his lawyer said.

“Yellen denied producing child pornography, but stated that he often secretly photographed children’s bare feet at the gymnastics academy where he was employed and at gymnastics events where he attended as an official photographer,” wrote Alsaden, the Prosecutor. “Yellen stated he would then masturbate to the images.”

During the FBI search of Yellen’s home, investigators also found a folder marked “BFK” – an acronym for “Barefoot Kids” – containing about 56,000 photos.

“Some of these photos focused on both the children’s feet and their genital areas…” Alsaden wrote.

Yellen created thousands of subfolders with the gymnasts’ names. Each folder was filled with pictures of the gymnast’s feet, photos he may have had of their clothed genital areas, and images from the athlete’s social media.

A victim speaks out

One file was named after Evelyn Patient, a gymnast who trained at the Michigan Elite Gymnastics Academy and publicly identified herself as one of Yellen’s victims. Her victim impact statement was filed in federal court.

The patient, now 26, met Yellen as a teenager and knew him as the “cameraman” who was always at the academy.

Yellen eventually began traveling with the girls to gymnastics camps without parental supervision and photographing them in swimsuits and bikinis, she wrote in a victim impact statement to the judge.

As a teenager, the patient spent time with the photographer at her home and went for walks together in the woods behind her house.

“He started messaging me all the time. He expressed his love for me and asked to spend Valentine’s Day together,” Patient wrote. “I was under 16 years old at the time.”

He came to her house uninvited with gifts for her 16th birthday.

“At this point, my family and I have cut Yellen out of our lives because his involvement was beyond inappropriate,” she wrote. “He was constantly sending messages, lashing out in anger and sadness and demanding that we stay in touch.”

After Yellen’s arrest, she was contacted by the FBI and told that investigators had found a folder with her name on it.

“In this folder were pictures of myself in a jersey training, with close-ups and inappropriate shots of my body,” she wrote. “Some of these pictures didn’t even show my face, but Yellen (knew) well enough to separate them under my name on his PC.”

Dispute over service dog

Yellen faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years, and prosecutors say he should serve 15 1/2 years in federal prison, followed by supervised release. According to the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the average sentence for a federal child porn offense is seven years nationwide and more than nine years in Michigan.

Yellen deserved a longer sentence because the children depicted in the child porn were younger than 12 and because the media contained sadistic or masochistic content, prosecutors argued.

Yellen will also be required to register as a sex offender for at least 20 years after her release from prison.

“David counseled and addressed the emotional issues that led to his addiction to child pornography,” his attorney Raben wrote. “Every part of his life as he knew it is destroyed and will never be restored.”

“How much more punishment does a 60-year-old man need?” she added.

Several victims are expected to attend the sentencing, and prosecutors have asked the judge to allow Chewy, a black Labrador/Golden Retriever service dog, to accompany the victims in the courtroom. According to the motion, Yellen declined to have the dog in the room during the sentencing.

Patient, the former gymnast, said Yellen is a pedophile and deserves punishment.

“I am concerned for the safety of the girls he works with and can only hope that the judge gives him the appropriate amount of time to keep these girls safe and free from his involvement in their lives, unlike mine.” , wrote patient.

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@robertsnellnews

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