LOS ANGELES – A 65-year-old ex-USC professor pleaded guilty on Friday, September 5 to traveling to the Philippines and sexually assaulting several underage boys between ages 9 and 17.
According to the prosecution, Walter Lee Williams had engaged in multiple webcam sex sessions with two Filipino boys, ages 13 and 14, in 2010. The next year he traveled to the country and sexually assaulted both boys, plus a 15-year-old, and reportedly had sexual contact with three other 16-year-olds also from the Philippines.
Upon retuning to Los Angeles in February 2011, Williams was “intercepted” at the airport on charges of child pornography. He fled the city a week after being questioned and was captured by FBI officials a year later in the Mexican coastal town of Playa del Carmen, after being recognized from a newspaper as one of the FBI’s “10 Most Wanted Fugitives.”
Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Michael Moore said that Williams’ illicit behavior caught the attention of officials after receiving a tip from someone concerned about the minors’ safety.
“There are other victims who have suffered by this man’s actions,” Moore said.
An attorney from the University of Southern California provided the FBI with materials Williams had donated to the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives containing “lascivious visual depictions of minors,” according to the plea agreement. Similar explicit images were also obtained from Williams’ home.
Richard L. Arlington, a former roommate of Williams’, was also arrested last year for sharing illicit images of children on his computer. Arlington, 72, has pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography, and will be sentenced on November 17.
Both Williams and Arlington were members of the Buddhist Universal Association of Los Angeles, which upholds an ideology of “extreme sexual freedoms,” according to an FBI spokesperson.
In Friday’s court hearing before U.S. District Judge Phillip S. Gutierrez, Williams admitted to engaging in illegal sexual contact with minors abroad and entered a plea deal. Federal prosecutors agreed to recommend that he serve a maximum of five years in prison, must pay $25,000 in restitution to the young victims, and is also subject to 10 years supervision upon his release.
Williams was a tenured professor of anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, and history at USC for almost two decades before quitting in 2011. An author from the University of North Carolina and Fullbright Award winner, Williams was renowned for his work within the gay and lesbian community. He also received the USC General Education Outstanding Teacher Award in 2006.
As a respected professor, Williams repeatedly traveled under the guise of “academic research on sexuality in the Southeast Asia/Pacific region.” He used said trips to sexually assault underage boys, according to prosecutors, and has at least 10 victims, all minors, across Southeast Asia.
(With reports from KTLA, Los Angeles Daily News, and Los Angeles Times.)
(www.asianjournal.com)
(LA Midweek September 10-12, 2014 Sec. A pg.1)
