Former Foreign Service Officer Sentenced to 20 Years; Northern Virginia Middle School Teacher Sentenced to 15 Years in Child Exploitation Cases

(Alexandria, Virginia) - Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division; Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Edgar Moreno, Assistant Director of Domestic Operations of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security; and Colonel David M. Rohrer, Chief of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Police Department, announced today two significant sentencings in separate child exploitation cases. Gons Gutierrez Nachman, 42, a former U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Officer, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee to 20 years in federal prison on charges of possessing child pornography and misusing his U.S. diplomatic passport. Nachman was also sentenced to a ten year term of supervised release following his release from prison. John Byron Shulick, 53, a teacher at Bull Run Middle School in Prince William County, Virginia, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady to 15 years in federal prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release on charges of production of child pornography.

According to court documents and proceedings, Nachman pled guilty on April 17, 2008 to possessing child pornography while at his official U.S. Department of State leased apartments in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 2004 through 2007. Nachman also pled guilty to misusing his U.S. diplomatic passport by using it for personal travel to Brazil in November 2007 after he had been removed from that country by the U.S. Ambassador. Nachman had been employed as a Foreign Service Officer in the U.S. Department of State since May 2003. He served as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy at Kinshasa, DRC, and as a consular officer at U.S. Consulates in Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In a separate case, Shulick pled guilty to production of child pornography on May 23, 2008. According to court documents, between October 2007 and March 2008, Shulick, then a teacher at Bull Run Middle School in Prince William County, met a minor female from Fairfax County on the Internet through an adult social networking website focusing on bondage, sadistic and masochistic conduct, and submissive/dominant relationships. On numerous occasions, Shulick drove with the girl from Fairfax County to his home in Catlett, Virginia, where he took pornographic pictures and movies of the girl. Pictures recovered by detectives from the Fairfax County Police Department’s Child Exploitation Unit and the Computer Forensics Unit led to Shulick’s charge in federal court.

“As these cases demonstrate, individuals producing, receiving, and distributing child pornography come from all walks of life,” said U.S. Attorney Rosenberg. The common link, however, is that they put our children in real danger. The long sentences imposed today are absolutely appropriate.”

The Nachman case was investigated by the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald L. Walutes Jr. and Trial Attorney Kyle G. Hansen from the Criminal Division’s Domestic Security Section.

The Shulick case was investigated by the Child Exploitation Unit of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Police Department; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Assistant United States Attorneys Gerald J. Smagala and Edmund P. Power prosecuted the case on behalf of the United States.

A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/vae. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov or on http://pacer.uspci.uscourts.gov.

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