Naughton\nAPBNews.com courtroom sketch \nLOS ANGELES - Saying his entry into the world of online chat was a way to escape from work-related stress, fallen Infoseek whiz Patrick Naughton says his sexy online talk with a presumed 13-year-old girl on the Internet was fantasy only. Under cross-examination, however, his claims were contrasted with some explicit evidence.
Testifying at his trial Thursday, the 34-year-old online wunderkind said he was indulging fantasy role-playing and nothing else, even assuming the person portraying a 13-year-old girl was really a much older woman.
That testimony raises much of the heart of his defense - the distinction between reality and unreality the defense says the Internet does so much to evoke. In fact, says the Los Angeles Times, Naughton's appearance in court wasn't expected and was a very daring move by his defense to pursue what many think is a novel - and risky - strategy.
Naughton's attorney had suggested in earlier cross-examinations, and Naughton himself appeared to reiterate, that as often as not people in Internet chat rooms are not exactly what they seem to be.
Prosecutors allege Naughton believed wholeheartedly that he was chatting with, and going to the Santa Monica pier to meet, an actual 13-year-old girl. But when asked by his attorney Donald Marks why he talked "dirty" in the "Dad-Daughter Sex" Internet chat room, Naughton said fantasy was the point.
"It's fantasy role-playing and it might even be fun if they were any good at it," Naughton answered. Which is why, he added, he believed that when he went to Santa Monica, he was more likely to meet "a nice, confused 40-year-old woman from Encino" than a 13-year-old girl.
But Assistant U.S. Attorney Patricia Donahue blasted at Naughton's version of events, confronting him with several sexual propositions he apparently, and unwittingly, made to undercover FBI agents online, not to mention sexually explicit pictures of children found on his laptop computer, and the names of three chat rooms he often entered - titles suggesting they catered to men with sexual fetishes involving underage children, the Times says.
Naughton's once-glittering Internet career collapsed almost at the moment he was arrested Sept. 16. He had been one of the whiz kids of Sun Microsystems before joining Infoseek and moving up to vice president there and of the Go Network, which merged Infoseek and was ultimately bought itself by the Disney Company. Ironically, Naughton's duties at Go included overseeing child-friendly Net content.
He's charged with using interstate commerce to solicit sex with a minor, crossing state lines with that intent, and possession of child porn, and faces up to 35 years in prison if convicted.
It centered around his chat partner "KrisLA," who turned out to be Los Angeles Sheriff's Deputy Amber Braaten - who testified earlier in the week she helped arrest Naughton on the Santa Monica pier, after he introduced himself and suggested they take separate paths to the beach for a walk on the sand.
She appeared that day in denim blue overalls, white sweater, her blond hair in pigtails, white tennis shoes, and carrying a green backpack - though in reality she is and appears to be in her early 30s.
