Report of Child Pornography from IT Specialist Leads to Offender
Man faults 'other self' for porn: Convicted sex offender charged with access material at work
By Pat Reavy, Deseret Morning News, 12-15-06
A convicted sex offender formerly employed at Primary Children's Medical Center has been arrested and charged with downloading child pornography at work.
But the man says he has multiple personalities, and although he disapproves of child porn himself, one of his other personalities wants to look at it.
Kevin Edward Sutherland, 45, was charged with five felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. He was booked into the Salt Lake County Jail Wednesday night. He is scheduled to make his first court appearance today. The investigation into Sutherland began a little over a year ago when the head of computer security for Intermountain Health Care contacted the Attorney General's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, according to court documents.
By that time, Sutherland had been fired by PCMC. He worked at the hospital from April 1995 until Oct. 26, 2005, court documents state. His last position was in the parent resource center assisting the parents of patients. He never worked with the patients themselves, said Primary spokeswoman Bonnie Midget.
During his tenure, he also worked in food services and the business office, she said.
The security department said Sutherland's computer login was being used to access pornographic sites, including "young naked boys in sexual
poses," according to court documents. In September of 2005, Sutherland's computer login was used to access 990 adult and child pornography images, court documents state.
IHC security reported "consistent viewing of adult and child porn images throughout the month and on multiple days. User did unique searches," the document stated.
ICAC agents visited Sutherland's home on Dec. 7, 2005. He wasn't home, but his wife said she had an idea of why the agents were there.
She stated her husband, "is against child pornography and would never do anything to hurt children" and that he would "never access child pornography," according to court documents.
The case took a bizarre twist, however, when Bonnie Sutherland told the agents her husband was being treated by a doctor for a mental illness in which he manifests multiple personalities. "One of the personalities is a teenage boy," she told investigators, according to court documents. As the teenage boy personality, Kevin Sutherland only wanted to look at images of girls his own age, she told agents, according to court documents. Another of his personalities is a young male and "this personality wanted to look at images of child porn," court documents state. "(Bonnie Sutherland) stated that (Kevin) Sutherland has no memory of what the other personalities do when they take over his body," according to court documents. Bonnie Sutherland further told investigators that when her husband was off his medication and the other personalities took over, she had to tell them sternly to "go home" and his normal personality would return," court documents state.
Kevin Sutherland later talked to investigators and said that while he physically accessed porn on his work computer, "mentally it was not (himself,)" he stated in court documents. He said he had the personalities of a 13-, 14- and 16-year-old. The 16-year-old was named "Casey" and was "very sexual and self-destructive," according to court documents.
In 1986, Sutherland was convicted in New Hampshire for indecent exposure and lewdness involving a minor. His probation was later transferred to Utah. He was discharged from his probation in 1991.
All employees have background checks going seven years back from every city and state they have lived during that time, Midget said. The hospital also checks the Utah Sex Offender registry regularly, she said.
Sutherland was never on the registry during the time he was employed at PCMC. But even if he was, the attorney general's office said, because of the way the registry was set up in the early 1990s, the hospital would not have been able to check it. Convicted sex offenders were placed on the registry for only five years at that time. And the registry was only available to law enforcement agencies.
In this case AG spokesman Paul Murphy said the hospital "did everything right" in reporting Sutherland as soon as a problem was detected. The hospital, Midget said, has an "aggressive computer security system" that regularly screens for violations.
Sutherland's last known employment was at Salt Lake Regional Medical Center in 2005. The hospital did not return calls placed Thursday by the Deseret Morning News, checking his employment status.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com,Deseret News Publishing Company
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