Russian student Vladimir Mozhenkov says he was coerced, under threat of arrest, into confessing to using a Carroll College computer to send child porn over the Internet. "I could either speak or get thrown in jail," he testified April 7. "I generally think of (police) as very harsh people. They don't care about you as human being."
The 19-year-old student has asked a federal judge to throw his confession out, as well as evidence said to link him to a Website providing sexually explicit photography of children, according to the Associated Press, which says no immediate ruling came down.
Federal law enforcement in Missouri reportedly downloaded 37 child porn photos from a Website and traced the source to Carroll, a Roman Catholic college. Mozhenkov claims a U.S. Customs agent and a computer expert forced him to talk and was not advised of his right to legal counsel before the coerced confession. He's been in jail in the case since January and faces seven years imprisonment and deportation if found guilty.
