This week's feature story, "Crash," tells the story of Scamps piano player Bill Laursen, who last month pleaded guilty to child porn charges. Before his incarceration, Laursen sent a letter to

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"Sorry, Sorry, Sorry.......this is way too long but I don't know how to say these things in any briefer fashion and I won't have the opportunity to go into more detail later.

For those of you that haven't heard already, I am being sent to federal prison. I will begin serving my prison term on June 23rd. I don't know how long the sentence will be as my sentencing hearing won't be held for another 2 to 4 months (I will be incarcerated while awaiting my sentence). Early indications are that I will be sentenced for somewhere between 6 to 14 years.

I can only imagine how hard it has been for you to watch me go through what I have and not be really rattled by it. I'm sure that my actions surprised you at the very least and in some cases, made you and your families uncomfortable. I am sorry beyond words. And I'm also sorry that I have not been able to try to help you understand any of it.

It is true that I have been sequestered by legal counsel for the past 8 months. But to be completely honest, I was reluctant to talk to anyone while attempting to sort it out for myself. I found my way to a really great psychotherapist who has helped me recognize that I have been carrying severe emotional pain for most of my life. This pain that had been left untreated for 40 years has brought me to this difficult place I now find myself.

I could finish my letter right here; say I'm sorry and bid adieu. But some friends whose judgment I greatly admire have convinced me that I need to tell this story to people I care about. So here it is (follows).

Two trauma events occurred in my mid-teen years that overwhelmed me. First, my father was killed in a small plane accident. Not quite two years later, I had an auto accident (driving while intoxicated) that left a best friend dead and two others injured. I tried to move on with my life the way people did during the late 1960s in the small Missouri town where I was raised; that is, by bucking up and not looking back. Meeting with psychiatrists and psychologists branded people as mental in those days and was to be avoided at all costs.

Well, avoid I did. I built a naïve response structure (to stimuli that triggered the emotional pain) as best I could during those teen years that seemed to help me deal with those times when I was hurting from formless emotional difficulties that I wasn't even aware enough of to acknowledge. My psychotherapist has termed these tough times as 'vague anxieties' and has helped me recognize that I have built my way of dealing with these anxieties on an unhealthy foundation of responses formulated way back then.

It never seemed like the way I'd developed with dealing with these anxieties was hurting anyone. In fact, that seemed to be the beauty of it. Looking at porn, which later turned into surfing for porn online, seemed a totally private activity, one that didn't involve or infringe on other human beings in any way. I wasn't aware that my desire to do what was described in my world growing up as a 'man'-like activity was actually a compulsion driven by emotional pain; or perhaps more accurately stated, as my failure to find a way to properly relieve my emotional pain in a socially acceptable way.

Well, my never being able to hold onto to a sustainable long-term relationship should have been a clue that something was seriously askew, especially given all the remarkable women I'd been very fortunate to be involved with over the years. But it has taken this legal crisis to finally drive me into the therapist's chair for a long enough period of time to be truly beneficial.

As the legal proceedings began, I was alarmed to discover that the thing I was being indicted for carried, on the federal level, a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and had been put in place by Congress during the early 2000s. A court appointed therapist told me early on that it was too bad that I hadn't been busted by state authorities because a likely result would have been one year probation.

This Congressional Statute has 'relieved' the federal judicial branch from being able to separately consider sentence length in child pornography possession cases, forcing all legal proceedings to work from the perspective that 10 years in prison is the smallest sentence allowed. If I understand correctly, the statute seems to have softened over the last year or so to where mandatory minimums are beginning to morf into recommended minimums instead. But thus far, judges are continuing to hand out what were mandatory minimum sentences without exception. As a result, the only hope of possibly receiving a lesser sentence is to plea bargain.

Since I did have images of naked minor girls on my computer, my attorney said that to go to trial would get me an automatic 10 year minimum sentence that he would not be able to mount a strong defense against. Since there were some serious problems with the way the Homeland Security agents conducted themselves when they come to my house, he made the case that we needed to attempt to get the evidence suppressed, which, if successful, would result in getting the charges against me dropped. And thus, we have spent the past 3½ months in Motion To Suppress Hearings. During this period of time, we had to declare whether we were going to go to trial or plea bargain (admit guilt and bargain for a reduced sentence) if we lost the Motion To Suppress. My attorney convinced me that we needed to plea bargain.

We felt that we had a very good chance of suppressing the evidence upon which the prosecution had built their case. A series of unlawful actions were taken by the Homeland Security agents that came to my house and left with my computer, actions that they were not able to admit to while giving court testimony. In fact, they had to strongly deny actions they carried out and things they said in order to keep their case alive. But in the end, and to our surprise, on May 26th the district court ruled that they didn't find our request compelling enough and denied the Motion To Suppress.

Because of the profound effect that the unlawful evidence gathering activities and perjured testimony of these two Homeland Security agents is having on my life, it is difficult for me to gain an objective perspective about them. But I have family and friends that have law enforcement careers that I admire very much. In fact, I can honestly say that I respect very much and am thankful for the people that work at all of the various law enforcement levels to help make our country safe. I understand the frustration that law enforcement officials must feel when they are held accountable to properly following guidelines while the people they are after are not. But I think you would agree with me that, nonetheless, it is important that we continue to insist that they be held to following the guidelines and procedures that comes with their job descriptions.

I thought my attorney kind of got to the bottom of the whole thing when he said in court that all the federal agents would have had to do in my case was (audio) record their visit to my home. If the agents would have recorded their visit, then they could have easily corroborated their version of things. The agents admitted to having the equipment to do this clandestinely but they chose not to use it.

There is some slight repetition below to some of what is contained above.......the following is largely borrowed from an e-mail I recently wrote.

This whole situation (my legal situation) is surreal, the term I hear from so many now that I am able to talk about this. My attorney and I thought there was a very good possibility that the entire thing would be thrown out. We thought that we were going to get our Motion To Suppress granted at last Tuesday's (May 26th) hearing. But it was denied instead.

It boiled down to who was most credible, me or the federal agent desperate to get my computer because he had let any possibility for his getting a search warrant 'stale' (their term). He has not been truthful under oath beginning with his testimony to the Grand Jury and continuing through the Motion To Suppress Hearings.

I thought my attorney did a good job of exposing many things, especially some large gaps of time unaccounted for by the lead agent in his recounting of their visit to my house. I also thought my attorney did a nice job of exposing that although the agents had the ability to clandestinely record their 'knock and talk' (the descriptive term they call their visit to my home), they chose not to so; thus inferring they would not then have to be held accountable procedurally.

The presiding judge stated several times in her deliberations denying our Motion To Suppress, that I should have continued to ask the agents to leave my premises; perhaps inferring that I weakened my Motion To Suppress because I did not. To my thinking at the time, since I had told them in no uncertain terms that they could not enter my house initially but they did anyway, what good was continuing to request them to leave going to do? And after witnessing their willingness in court to manipulate the truth under oath, it's easy to believe that the agents would not have been forthcoming about my continuing to ask them to leave anyway.

In recognizing my naivitivity (sp?) to the law (they had already checked me for priors and knew I had never had any previous encounters with the law), the Homeland Security agents, at a certain point early in our conversation, simply walked into my house, correctly predicting what the outcome would be when they forced me to quickly decide whether to physically block their entry or stand aside (I stood aside). The lead federal agent stated during testimony that he has done at least 100 of these 'knock and talks'. Obviously he has become quite skilled at gaining access into peoples' home even after being denied permission to. Their pushing their way into my house had the duo effect of them being firmly ensconced in my living room and making me feel helpless to make these guys do anything I requested. This set the tone (of helplessness on my part) for the rest of our encounter.

And there is so much more to this....they leveraged everything after that with 'if you don't let us (do whatever they were asking me to do), we'll wait right here until a search warrant is delivered and you'll be forced to do what we're asking you to do anyway'. Every time they would throw out this 'we'll get a search warrant' threat, they would follow it with 'why don't you make it a lot easier on all of us and let us (do whatever they wanted to do) without one'. This certainly has the effect of wearing a person down, especially people like most of us who's only exposure to things like this is on TV. In their testimony, the agents both stated that nothing about search warrants had ever been discussed with me!!

We will continue to Appeal, asking higher courts to suppress the evidence found on my computer. But I will have to do it through a court appointed attorney because my family can no longer pay my attorney now that we've exhausted the $17,000 we gave his law firm late last year (the approximate cost of each appellate action is $5000). I had a very bad experience with a court appointed attorney (public defender) when my legal proceedings began, but I'm hoping the next one will do better because of the excellent work already done by the private counsel I've been using.

My attorney did tell me that winning Appeals is harder than winning on the district level, which is where we have just lost. He said the process of getting an Appeal is slow, will probably take up to two years. He also made it clear to me that I'll have to await Appeal while serving prison time.

I tell you all of this because friends are asking if everything has been done that could have been done (in my defense). I think that my attorney (actually, for a lot of my case it's been two attorneys) has been a great one. He (or his office) has proven to be very accurate and fair in their accounting of charges to my defense fund. And he has produced a lot of excellent documentation on my behalf that is very compelling. Could someone else have been more effective? I guess I'll never know the answer to the question for sure, but from my not-experienced-in-the-least-but-like-to-think-of-myself-as-a-moderately-bright-person, it seems to me he's done about as good a job as any attorney could have.

Now its time for me to start facing this new future, one impossible to predict. Seems scary, of course, but I chose a long time ago to let scary things impact me only when I get up next to them. I will be able to get through this.....I will find a way to continue being artfully creative.....this too shall be behind me at some point and I will thrive again. The incredible support of people like you has helped beyond words.

To be clear, there were images of naked girls under legal age on my computer. The lead Homeland Security agent that came to my house, who showed a badge indentifying himself as an Immigration Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) agent, or the prosecutor's office leaked to the media prior to my indictment hearing something about there being 300,000 pictures on my computer. But during testimony, when this agent was asked 'how many (images) would you say actually fit the criteria under federal stature for child pornography', his answer was 'I quit at about 5,000 images'. This open inference I know is still quite disturbing but far different from leaving people with the idea that over a quarter million pictures of naked minor girls were found on my computer. We were going to hire an expert to make sure a truthful number was put to this, but my attorney said that it would cost approximately $5000 to do so. We wanted to get this expert's findings added to our defense but we've been forced to apply my family's limited financial resources to other expenses (mainly attorney fees).

During 15 months of psychotherapy, I have gained a much greater understanding on what was driving my compulsion to surf porn and more specifically, why I began to look at underage girls. Although their certainly were a lot of naked girls and women both above and below legal age and a little (very little) underage sexual activity depicted on my computer that the authorities hauled away, my psychotherapist and I discovered that I preferred viewing girls around the age of 15 but covered (clothed or in swimming suits). This has proven to be a significant finding in helping me begin a path to true emotional healing. My therapist explains that this shows a propensity on my part of trying to seek out the last time in my life when I existed without the powerful emotional pain that began with my father's sudden death in the airplane accident.

My doctor also explained that the endless searching that I had been exhibiting was propelled by a compulsion to search out a more perfect version of my world at 15 than I'd been able to find in previous surf sessions. This is rather pathetic on a rational basis, this unending search for a time and place in life that can never be recovered. But our psyches, as most of us are aware of, are affected by much more than obvious rational.

I remember instantly realizing, even at that young age, that the traumatic loss of my father had grabbed away permanently the only life I knew, one that I cherished highly. I knew with a much greater certainty than I wanted to possess at that stage of my life that anything done in the attempt to rectify the loss was hopeless. This left me feeling helpless and taught me way too early in life that there is far too much that happens in our lives that we have no control over.

I shouldn't have had those images on my computer and am very sorry to have put myself and the people associated with me into such an uncomfortable place. I will say that I had no idea any jail sentence was associated with 'image possession', much less one that by pretty much everybody's account seems extremely heavy-handed. The government's idea to associate a length of sentence with the number of images 'possessed' seems to be an underdeveloped notion that I think will be found nonsensical as this issue continues to be explored in the future. Looking for some measure to increase incarceration for someone already receiving the ridiculously harsh minimum sentence of 10 years for the crime of allowing an unhealthy way of dealing with emotional pain to develop seems characteristic of a more archaic civilization than ours.

I have not been able to resist over these last 8 months taking note of the sentences of people found guilty of crimes involving weapons, armed robbery, inflicting serious bodily harm and even murder (in some cases). Sentences for these kinds of criminal activities seem to all be shorter than what mine will be (unless those individuals had previous records). I saw on CNN the other day that some well-known rapper was just sent to prison for 1 year for attempting to purchase unregistered machine guns, silences and other related gear. He received less than 1/10 of what my sentence will be. Wow!

Let me leave you with three things:

First; looking at pictures of naked people is not the same as molesting children. These are two very different things and as ridiculous to equate as a notion like 'all gun owners are murderers'. With their weapons, gun owners possess the means to kill, but this possession is not an indicator that the owner either is a murderer or about to become one.

Second; we need to get things like this legal action against me moved over into the realm of where it belongs; not prison sentences but required psychotherapy with perhaps a little probation thrown it that will assure that emotional weaknesses like this are properly dealt with. People that resort to alcohol abuse to deal with unresolved emotional pain have been more correctly handled (mental help instead of prison) by our legal system for quite some time. Placing drug abusers in rehabilitative situations where therapy is implemented instead of prison is becoming recognized as a far more effective way of helping drug addicts kick their habit(s) and become contributors to our wonderful country. Let's go ahead, even though the two words naked and minors sends shivers through just about everyone, and make looking at child porn to deal with emotional pain a mental health issue instead of yet another excuse to lock people up.

Third; if the slow movement of American societal evolution when it comes to this delicate issue persistently remains stalled at focusing on punishing instead of curing, let's better educate the general populace that looking at naked images of minors will, without exception, get you a federal prison term of at least ten years.

An opportunity is coming up for people to write to the judge that will sentence me. In these letters, supporters of mine are asked to speak about my character (and not grumble about our legal system). My attorney says that 20 letters will probably be helpful; 100 letters should definitely make a difference. And he said that having a number of supporters show up at my sentencing hearing (probably 3 or 4 months away) could be extremely helpful. I have a very helpful outline that my attorney has prepared to help people with the letter writing campaign (its attached to this e-mail). Please know that I will not think less of you and the great friendship we have if you don't write, but I'll sure appreciate it if you do.

Come by the Open House style party for me at Teri Wilder's house next Sunday anytime from 3pm to 9pm. It is really going to be a lot of fun and I would love to see you and yours.

Have Great Days Always~~Bill"