A 39-year-old Meridian man who admitted using hidden cameras in his home to produce sexually explicit videos of four male juveniles will spend 15 years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office in Boise. The boys in the videos didn't know they were being recorded.
Donn Michael Casper, who was sentenced Monday morning, will be on supervised release for 20 years after he completes his prison sentence. He also was ordered to attend sex offender treatment and pay a $1,500 fine.
Casper pleaded guilty in November to four counts of sexual exploitation of children/production of sexually explicit images of minors. The videos were recorded between August 2008 and June 2011.
Casper was arrested in June, after the United States Postal Inspection Service served a search warrant at his house in the 100 block of Washakie Street in Meridian. The Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and Meridian police assisted.
Ada County prosecutors said Casper had been abusing a 14-year-old boy who had been living with him on weekdays during the school year. Police said the boy's parents had trusted him to tutor their son and help him with his homework.
Casper was grooming the parents, as much as he was grooming his victims, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jim Peters told the Idaho Statesman in November.
"Grooming" is when a person tries to set up or prepare another person to be the victim of sexual abuse. Not all sexual abuse of children is preceded by grooming, but it is common and can be used by strangers or by those known to the victim.
Peters said Casper appeared to be a good friend to the parents of his victims. He lavished gifts on his victims and took them on trips out of town, said Peters.
Casper had no prior criminal record and several years ago was involved with the group Big Brothers, Big Sisters.
He became the target of an investigation after police in Toronto, Canada, discovered in October 2010 that a resident there had been uploading child porn from Casper's Internet Protocol address. Videos uploaded from Casper's address included recordings of prepubescent boys masturbating.
The boy who was living with Casper told investigators that when he was in 8th grade, Casper began talking about "his own childhood experiences with males" and gave him porn to look at, according to court records.
Casper was ordered to forfeit six computers, a DVD player, seven hard drives, cellular telephones, digital cameras, a video camera, monitors, and all electronic media used in the offense.
