Brooklyn, NY – A Brooklyn judge slammed the friends and family of a man convicted of child abuse, saying that their failure to provide him with the help he needed to recover from the trauma of being molested as a child resulted in him becoming a child abuser years later.
As previously reported on TOT News, Roy Naim was arrested in 2013 on child pornography charges.
Naim was convicted for attempted exploitation and possession of child pornography in December 2014 and was sentenced today to 15 years in prison.
While assistant U.S Attorney Saritha Komatireddy asked for a sentence in the low 20 year range, Judge Nicholas Garaufis gave the 32 year old Naim the mandatory minimum sentence, calling him “a soul adrift.” Court papers revealed that Naim had been molested by an older cousin at age 11 which left him struggling alone to cope with the after effects of abuse.
Garaufis noted that while many of Naim’s friends and family members had come to his sentencing in a show of support, they had failed him on a personal level causing the cycle of abuse to come full circle.
“He lives in a community where his urges, his needs, sexually, are more than frowned upon,” said Garaufis. “Maybe some of the people in this room could have helped him and should look in the mirror. You know who you are.”
Naim, who came from Israel as a child and never became a U.S. citizen, was profiled in a 2012 Time magazine article on immigration reform.
He and a partner in Louisianna were found to have made sexually explicit videos of boys, including a teenager with a brain tumor that Naim had met as a counselor in a camp for children with cancer.
Naim’s lawyer argued that his client has never been charged with touching any of the children involved.
The defense team also noted that given that former House speaker Dennis Hastert, who was convicted of being a serial molester of boys, had only received a 15 month prison sentence, Naim’s 15 year sentence seemed unjust.
A tearful Naim expressed his remorse to Garaufis.
“I failed as a human being,” Naim said. “The pain of this young victim and his family…I cannot imagine what they are going through and I’m the cause of all this.”
