The former executive director of the Episcopal Camp and Conference Center near Waverly in south Georgia's Camden County will serve five years on probation after he pleaded guilty to cruelty to children for having nude photos of girls on his office computer, officials said.
James Cox entered his guilty plea to cruelty to children in the second degree late Friday during a hearing before Chief Superior Court Judge Amanda F. Williams, Assistant District Attorney Rocky L. Bridges said.
In addition to five years' probation, Williams sentenced Cox to pay a $1,000 fine and banished him from Camden and the other four counties of the Brunswick Judicial Circuit, Bridges said.
Cox faced more serious charges when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrested him in March 2007.
Cox was charged then with single counts of sexual exploitation of children and computer pornography-child exploitation.
A subsequent investigation showed that the teenagers in the photos had likely taken the pictures of themselves, Bridges said.
"I'm very comfortable with the outcome,'' Bridges said of the sentence. "He was not involved with the taking of those images. It's my belief the girls took the pictures of themselves. He somehow came in possession of them.''
The girls were all clients at Gateway Behavioral Health Service's center at Honey Creek, a facility the public mental health agency leases from the Episcopal Church, Bridges said.
As executive director at Honey Creek, Cox oversaw the facility but had no contact with the Gateway clients whom Bridges characterized as troubled teens.
In 2007, the Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, then bishop of the Episcopal Diocese in Georgia announced that the church had suspended Cox and notified police after finding the images on Cox's computer.
Cox, who was a deacon in the church, was banned from the property, and he resigned a few days before his retirement date at the end of March 2007.
Bridges said it took a long time to get the case to trial.
"Part of the delay in this case has been the U.S. Attorney's Office took it up for two years and then decided not to prosecute it,'' Bridges said. "It came back to us.''
Cox could not be reached for comment.
Bridges said he may be living in the Tampa area.
terry.dickson@jacksonville.com, (912) 264-0405
Wow 5yrs probation? I don't care if he took the pictures or not he was in posession of them. These girls are there for help and guidance, not to be prey for sick men! Plus, after not sentencing him correctly, you ban him from the area so he can go find new victims in a new playground where his past stays hidden? Whats wrong with our court system? In a few years we will hear of him again and everyone will be saying "Why was he let off so easy the other times?"
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