Jewish immigration activist sentenced to 15 years in prison for child pornography
A New York jew who was once featured in a Time magazine cover story about immigration reform has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for possession of child pornography.
Roy Naim, 32, who was featured in the 2012 story titled 'We are Americans...just not legally', was also convicted in 2014 for attempted exploitation.
Federal agents found porn that depicted boys as young as nine years old performing sexual acts on Naim's computer. He admitted to viewing and downloading the porn for multiple years.
They were led to his Brooklyn home after arresting suspected child porn producer Johnathan Johnson, who fooled underage boys into thinking they were video conferencing with teenage girls and then recorded the acts.
The videos were posted on a website called and was sent to others through email, according to New York Daily News.
One of the victims was a teenage boy who was suffering from a brain tumor. He had attended a camp for children with cancer, where Naim worked as a counselor.
Johnson was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Naim, who immigrated to the US with his family when he was three years old, was named the 'Jewish face of the immigration reform struggle' after he appeared in the Time story.
It was the first time Naim made his undocumented status publicly known.
'My being public protects me because America loves stories,' he told The Forward in 2013.
'And when we hear about a good person — a person who is nice, who cares — we don't want him deported; we want him in this country.'
Naim will be deported to Israel after completing his sentence.
The Jewish Face of the Immigration Reform Struggle
'I failed as a human being,' Naim said in court. 'The pain of this young victim and his family...I cannot imagine what they're going through and I'm the cause of all this.'
Naim had been molested by an older cousin when he was 11 years old and struggled with his 'urges' in the Orthodox Jewish community, court papers revealed.
He later became the only member of his family not to gain citizenship in the US.
Both were brought up during Naim's sentencing by Brooklyn federal judge Nicholas Garaufis.
'He lives in a community where his urges, his needs, sexually, are more than frowned upon. Maybe some of the people in this room could have helped him and should look in the mirror. You know who you are,' Garaufis said.
'His entire family was naturalized but he was left out,' he added. 'People should look in the mirror about that.'
Naim faced life in prison without the possibility of parole under his charges, which Garaufis called 'incredibly excessive and irrational'.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Naim to at least 20 years behind bars.
Instead the judge sentenced Naim to the mandatory minimum time he was required to spend in prison, and said he believed Naim was 'truly remorseful'.
'But you have to do more than that,' he told Naim. 'You have to come to grips with your evil angels.'
