Last Updated on January 14, 2020
A convicted child sex offender, who will spend over a decade in prison for his crimes, has defended his collection of child pornography due to the fact that he identifies as an eight-year-old girl.
Joseph Gobrick, 45, from Grand Rapids, Michigan claims that the images he was caught with were computer animated, and therefore, protected by the First Amendment.
“I’ve always been an 8-year-old girl,’’ Gobrick said during sentencing, he continued: “And even my drawings and fantasies, I am always an 8-year-old girl.’’
According to WZZM13, eight of the child victims from the images found on Gobrick’s computer were later identified, demolishing his “computer animated” defense.
The victims depicted in the images were children ranging from infancy to age 5, court documents stated.
Gobrick was called “a danger to the public’’ by Kent County Assistant Prosecutor, Daniel Helmer.
Helmer said, “Even during the trial, the defendant continued to draw, talking about raping babies in the Kent County Jail and making other statements about how this is his constitutional right to continue to do so.”
Gobrick was later sentenced to a prison term of 10 to 20 years where he was found guilty on three counts of child sexually abusive commercial activity and using a computer to commit a crime by Kent County Circuit Court Judge, Paul Denenfeld.
Denenfeld said, “Based on everything he’s said and done, including bragging about what he was drawing in his cell, he obviously doesn’t think child sexually abusive material is wrong.
“This isn’t just virtual stuff; this is also real people being harmed.’’
And it doesn’t stop there.
In a bizarre twist to the trial, Gobrick fired his court-appointed attorney and chose to represent himself.
Gobrick maintained his innocence, challenging the legality of his prosecution, and sticking to his claim that the images were computer animated despite the child victims being identified in real life.
During his defense, going on the offensive against the nature of the trial, Gobrick said, “Under the law, Auschwitz was legal,’’ referring to the Nazi concentration camp in southern Poland and effectively comparing his prosecution to Nazism.
“What you’re doing here is wrong, just as Auschwitz was.’’
Gobrick is a child sex offender from New York, where he was convicted in 2001.
He maintains that he is not sexually attracted to children, telling the judge, “I would no sooner have sex with a child than you would with a rattlesnake.”
