U.S. District Judge James C. Cacheris sentenced Ricks to 25 years, a fixed number tied to the deal. Federal guidelines called for 30 years to life on charges of production and possession of child pornography.
“It was obviously a very serious offense to molest these children,” Cacheris told Ricks after approving the sentence, which includes a lifetime of supervised release after prison. “You were a manipulator as a teacher. You took advantage of your position.”
A Washington Post investigation published last year, before he was charged with federal crimes, revealed that Ricks, 51, had abused boys in Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Japan, locations where he had children in his care. Ricks, who was married, used his position of authority to endear himself as a caring mentor and friend before infiltrating his victims’ lives, obsessing over them and ultimately getting them drunk on tequila before abusing them, according to dozens of interviews and Ricks’s letters and journals.
Ricks was able to move between and among teaching jobs with barely a blemish on his record as school districts were more concerned with getting rid of him than punishing him, The Post found.
Court papers filed this week indicate that Ricks acknowledged in interviews with the FBI and local investigators at least nine victims, including a previously unknown boy from his time teaching at a private school in Georgia in the mid-1980s. Prosecutors say they believe there are at least a dozen others whom Ricks either victimized or targeted.
The first known victim of Ricks’s abuse — Christopher Payne, who was molested in 1979 while a guest at Ricks’s family home in North Carolina — spoke emotionally in court Thursday, saying he wanted to represent all the others abused over the years. He sat in the courtroom next to Abby Ricks, who divorced Ricks after the revelations of his secret life emerged.
“He knew what he was doing, and he needs to pay for that,” Payne said. “I’m hurt. I’m confused. I’m trying to find closure. . . . He stripped away my childhood, my dignity, who I was.”
By engineering a guilty plea, Ricks and prosecutors avoided what could have been several long and disturbing trials, and he skirted what could have been a life sentence. Although prosecutors in four jurisdictions agreed to drop their cases as part of the negotiations, it is likely that Ricks still will face charges on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, where he is accused of molesting a German foreign exchange student in his home in 2004.
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