CORRECTION: In our original story, we mistakenly reported that Pagoria was on-duty while committing the alleged crimes and that the alleged victims were inmates. In fact, the alleged acts were perpetrated while Pagoria was off-duty and did not involve inmates but underage civilians. We regret the error amd have updated the story below.
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 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 off-duty, allegedly forced two young females 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 under their noses. 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 extremely disturbing.
According to news reports, the incident was originally brought to the attention of Polk County law enforcement by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF).
“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 intolerance for sexual freedom his department regularly exhibits, and we’re having a bit of trouble this time around, too. After all, an off-duty deputy torturing underage females 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.
The arrest affadavit can be accessed here.
Image: Abu Ghraib by Columbian artist Fernando Botero
