Live BlogA FORMER UN weapons inspector has been found guilty of unlawful contact with a minor in an online sex sting, reports the BBC.
Scott Ritter was found guilty on five of six other charges at a court in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. He participated in a sexually explicit online chat with an undercover policewoman posing as a 15 year old girl named ‘Emily’. He also performed a sex act in front of a webcam.
Ritter claimed that he believed he was communicating with an adult playing out a fantasy role, and said that the conversation had taken place in an adult chatroom. He said it was “never his intent to contact a minor”.
The trial saw video of the exchange between Ritter and ‘Emily’ shown to the court. His wife and twin 18 year old daughters were absent from the courtroom when the tape was played.
Ritter was one of the UN’s chief weapons inspectors in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. He resigned in 1998 after accusing the UN and the US of failing to follow through on attempts to find weapons of mass destruction. He later criticised the US invasion.
Ritter says he became depressed after leaving his post, and that it was this depression which had driven him in 2001 to arrange to meet two teenage girls he had met in online chat rooms. He was charged with trying to set up a meeting with an undercover police officer posing as a teenager, but the charges were dropped after he sought professional help.
Ritter will be sentenced next month.
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