Polk County Deputy Sexually Tortured Minors While on Duty

POLK COUNTY, Fla.—The online boyfriend of a Polk County, Florida detention deputy who was arrested in late May on multiple counts of possession, production and promotion of child pornography while on duty has himself been arrested by Australian police at his home in Mullaloo, Australia. Christopher Lobban, 53, who will be extradited to Polk County, is accused of encouraging and directing the activities of the 45-year-old deputy, Robin Pagoria, who, while on duty, allegedly forced two young female inmates on different occasions to remove their clothes before handcuffing them to a table and administering as many as 62 lashes in what is being called “sadomasochistic spanking.” The ages of the girls is not indicated in either news reports or Pagoria’s arrest affidavit. Polk County is often in the news for charging people (who may or may not have ever stepped foot in the county) with sex crimes, but this time the alleged wrongdoing took place not just under their noses, but in their facilities. As embarrassing as that may be for Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, the allegations themselves—which involve not just the spanking but also the recording and distribution of the alleged sexual humiliation—are disturbingly reminiscent of the types of activities that took place in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War. In Abu Ghraib, as in Polk, prisoners—including, allegedly, Iraqi minors—were sexually humiliated and the process documented for posterity. In Iraq, of course, no one was ever charged with child pornography, or any sex crime, as they have been in this case, but the fact that Pagoria, who is accused of administering the spankings, videotaping them and sending them to Lobban in Australia, spent 26 years in the Marines before joining the sheriff’s office six years ago at least raises the question whether her ability to engage in non-consensual sexually charged “discipline” was formed or encouraged in the military. For the parents or guardians of the girls, as well as for Florida child protection agencies, the question how a sole detention deputy was able to commit such a crime in the first place should also be of great concern. Indeed, according to news reports, the incident was originally brought to Polk County law enforcement’s attention by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF), and not by anyone inside the corrections department. “Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd says the investigation began with a referral from DCF alerting investigators of the possible abuse. Detectives interviewed the two girls involved and the detention deputy. All provided similar accounts of what happened,” wtps.com reported in late May, after Pagoria was detained. “According to investigators Pagoria would force the girls to undress then handcuff them bent over a homemade torture table. The girls would be hit with a whip Pagoria purchased online while videotaping the beating with a camera on her cell phone.” At first, Pagoria confirmed that she had spanked the girls, but said it was “for misbehaving and to humiliate them into no longer breaking rules.” Under questioning, she initially admitted videotaping the spankings with her cell phone, but denied sharing them with Lobban, explaining that she only taped them so she could watch them at a later date in order to “refine” her technique. During a subsequent interview, however, after she had been given a Miranda warning, Pagoria admitted to having shared the videos with Lobban, who she had never met personally but with whom she shared a spanking fetish. The two reportedly met on a spanking website, Spankfinders.com. She also told police that Lobban had “sent her a photo of a spanking bench and asked if she had a desk, advised Robin what modifications to make to the desk to convert the desk into a spanking desk.” Pagoria had in fact modified an old desk to make it more functional as a spanking table. The arrest affidavit is a disturbing read, to say the least. “Once the child was secured to the bench, they were whipped repeatedly with a black colored sexual device, similar to a paddle,” it read, continuing, “The focal point of the video is the bare buttocks and genitals of the two minor children. The children both sustained substantial wounds to include hemorrhaging and minor lacerations due to the beating. The video ending in ____ is approximately 9 minutes and 18 seconds and contains audio of the child screaming. The video ending in ____ is approximately 10 minutes and 42 seconds and also contains audio of the child screaming.” In May, Sheriff Judd said of the charges against Pagoria, “To tell you I'm sick to my stomach is an understatement, not just because she's a detention deputy, but to think any adult would conduct themselves in that manner is horrific.” Sympathy for Judd is difficult to muster in the AVN offices, considering the abhorrent intolerance for sexual freedom his department regularly exhibits, and we’re having a bit of trouble this time around, too. After all, an on-duty deputy torturing underage inmates against their will is magnitudes worse than just about anything the vast majority of consensual adults will do with one another in the privacy of their own homes. Spanking itself has a long and rich history as a relatively mild fetish activity that has no relation to the abberant, abusive and illegal behavior exhibited by Pagoria. Is it not fair to ask how this could have happened in the department of one of America’s most aggressive and unsympathetic sex cops? Maybe, instead of trying to make the presumed sexual mores of Polk County the standard for the entire internet, the Sheriff should reel in his ambitions and take care of business at home before more minors are tortured on his watch. The arrest affadavit can be accessed here. Image: Abu Ghraib by Columbian artist Fernando Botero