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U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt sentenced former Subway spokesperson Jared Fogle, 38, to a prison term of more than 15 years today.
November 19, 2015
U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt sentenced former Subway spokesperson Jared Fogle, 38, to a prison term of more than 15 years today, accepting a plea deal that sees him admit to charges of receiving child pornography and repeatedly having sex with minors, according to a National Public Radio report. The case involved interstate travel to pay minors for sex, as well as at least 400 child pornography videos.
Fogle was sentenced to 188 months on each count, to be served concurrently. That amounts to just over 15 and a half years.
"Will serve a minimum of 13 years before parole. Lifetime supervised release," reported RTV6's Jordan Fischer.
The sentencing hearing started at 9 a.m. ET and lasted more than four hours, according to NPR. Prosecutors had been seeking a punishment of around 12 years in prison, while Fogle's lawyers asked for a sentence of around five years. Fogle is also reportedly paying about $1.4 million in total restitution to 14 victims, some of whom live in his home state of Indiana, NPR reported.
In a brief statement to the court, Fogle said, "I owe a huge apology to the people who supported me and my positive messages the last 15 years," according to WISH-TV's Tim McNicholas. Fogle added that he will learn from his recent experience and won't commit these crimes again.
Fogle pleaded guilty in federal court today to child porn and sex crime charges ahead of his sentencing, according to an NBC News report.
Under a plea deal first agreed upon in August, he must register as a sex offender after his release and have his digital devices monitored, according to the NBC report. Fogle was charged with one count each of traveling to engage in sexual conduct with a minor and receiving child pornography. The judge said that the images involved children as young as 6 and that Fogle asked adult prostitutes to procure children for him in various states.
In a sequence that local WISH-TV reporter Nick Natario described as "disturbing and very graphic," prosecutors in their portion of today's hearing read aloud text conversations between Fogle and a prostitute who was also a minor.
RTV6's Jordan Fischer said that it's "surreal" to sit in the courtroom and hear a prosecutor and Investigator Darin Odier of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department narrate texts between Fogle and others, in which emojis and text shorthand such as "LOL" appear in discussions of having sex with minors, NPR reported.
Before the sentencing, prosecutors and defense teams sparred in court over whether Fogle could have controlled himself — and whether he can be rehabilitated, the NBC report stated.
At today's hearing, Fogle's defense presented two medical experts, including Canadian forensic psychiatrist Dr. John Bradford, who testified by phone that his tests of Fogle found evidence of hypersexuality, NPR reported.
Bradford also said that Fogle has a compulsive drive — and that "When he lost weight it seemed that in a short period of time he developed compulsive sexuality," as Adriana Diaz of CBS News reported.
Fogle's lawyer also sought to clarify that while his client had had sex with minors, his victims were adolescents and not children, The Indianapolis Star says. The prosecutor in the case also noted that investigators determined that Fogle had not abused his own children. Fogle has been married for five years and is the father of two children under the age of 10.
The plea deal was reached in mid-August, after Fogle was charged with traveling to other states in order to pay to have sex with underage minors, according to the NPR report. An investigation into Fogle were followed by a raid of his home and details of his activities were publicly revealed by a female confidante who had worked with the FBI to gather evidence against him.
Soon after the raid of Fogle's home, Subway announced it had severed all ties with him. That outcome, and the prison sentence pronounced today, all began with a single message to the police about Fogle, NPR reported.
"The actions of Mr. Fogle were inexcusable and do not represent our brand values. That is why as soon as we learned about the disturbing allegations against him, we immediately suspended and subsequently terminated our relationship with him," said a Subway brand spokesperson.
As the U.S. attorney's office in southern Indiana noted at the time Fogle was charged:
"His child pornography crime began when he learned that alleged co-conspirator Russell Taylor was sexually exploiting a 14 year old girl in March 2011. At that time, Mr. Fogle did nothing to stop the abuse or report it to authorities, but chose instead to receive and repeatedly view the child pornography involving the girl and those other minors produced by his alleged co-conspirator in the years that followed. It total, Mr. Fogle admitted in court pleadings filed today that his actions caused the sexual victimization of a total of 12 minors in Indiana before his co-conspirator's arrest in April 2015. He preyed on minor victims who did not have the ability to protect themselves."
As the Two-Way reported in August, at the time of those events, Taylor was running Fogle's charitable foundation. He has reached his own plea deal and is expected to be sentenced in December.
Since his arrest, Fogle has paid $100,000 each to his 14 victims, according the NBC report. Those victims — four of whom are now adults — were identified after police say they reviewed nearly 160,000 text messages, more than 27,000 emails, and tens of thousands of videos and images. Two of those victims were 16 and 17 when Fogle traveled to New York City to pay them for sex at upscale hotels, prosecutors said in court documents, according to NBC.
