By KEITH EPPS
A repentant Craig Welker says his affinity for child pornography cost him and his loved ones a great deal of "embarrassment, pain and sadness."
It will also cost him nine years of freedom.
Welker, a former teacher and football coach at North Stafford High School, was sentenced to 80 years in prison with all but nine years suspended yesterday in Stafford Circuit Court.
The 34-year-old previously pleaded guilty to 40 counts of possessing child pornography.
He has also pleaded guilty in Fredericksburg to five counts of distributing child pornography and is also facing 125 possession charges there. He has not yet been sentenced in Fredericksburg.
Welker was an Earth science teacher and the defensive coordinator on the highly successful North Stafford football team when his world came crashing down in October.
Police raided his home on Cornell Street in Fredericksburg after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Someone using the screen name "powerade100" had uploaded numerous images to a Yahoo group, according to court records. The images depicted children who appeared to be between the ages of 2 and 10 being sexually molested.
The information was relayed to state police, and authorities traced the screen name and e-mail address to Welker. Special agent Darryl Wells got search warrants for Welker's home and school.
Compact discs, 8 mm videos, pictures and magazines were seized from his home, police said. Welker's laptop computer was seized from the school.
Defense attorney Carl Muzi asked Judge J. Martin Bass to sentence his client to just one year in prison.
Muzi said that while the photographs Welker had are "horrendous," Welker has done a lot of good in the community and didn't take the pictures nor act out his fantasies.
He said Welker already has jobs lined up with two construction companies and has the support system in place to get his life back together.
A couple dozen people were in court yesterday to support Welker, and more than 40 wrote letters of support.
Prosecutor Eric Olsen said Welker's supporters are good people, "but it's obvious they don't know the real Craig Welker."
Olsen called for a lengthy sentence and said the hundreds of pictures Welker possessed represented the ongoing exploitation of the children being victimized.
"If it weren't for the Craig Welkers of this world, there wouldn't be a market for [child pornography]," Olsen said.
Prior to Bass' sentence, Welker gave a tearful statement in which he accepted responsibility for his "wrong and immoral" actions.
He said he is devastated that his education career is over, and he assured the judge that he had "never acted on any of my urges and I never will I am truly sorry for my actions."
In addition to the prison term, Bass ordered Welker, who had no prior criminal record, not to ever access the Internet again or come within 100 feet of a school.
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