Content warning: This article describes child sexual abuse. Please take care while reading.
Explicit Polaroid and video evidence depicting child sexual abuse found in the walls of an outbuilding in California has led to the sentencing of Theodore Smith, 90, and his son, James Smith, 66, both now living in Texas, according to the Sacramento District Attorney’s Office.
Four years ago, in 2021, a person in California was renovating an abandoned outbuilding on their recently purchased property in Orangevale, about 25 miles (ca. 40 km) northeast of Sacramento. In the walls of the building, that person, who has requested not to be identified in the press, found decades-old Polaroid pictures and VHS videotapes depicting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and contacted the police. Some images involved victims 5 years old and younger.
“I’ve seen a lot of interesting things here in our cleaning up of the property, but this was different,” the building’s new owner told Sacramento news station KCRA 3 that year. “It was homemade pictures and I could tell that the contents were not something that I should be involved in at all. The first call I made was to the sheriff’s department.”
“The crimes that we have here, alleged crimes we have here, are sickening,” Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Shaun Hampton added when the CSAM was found. “Absolutely sickening,” Hampton said.
Theodore and James Smith lived in Orangevale in the 1980s and ’90s
Investigators determined that Theodore Smith and his son, James Smith, lived at the Orangevale address around the same time the content was made. Both men had since moved to Texas. Once arrested, they admitted what they’d done. Both men, who had lived on the Orangevale property for 40 years before it was sold, pled no contest to the charges. KCRA reports additional CSAM was discovered at their Texas address, and James was arrested driving to California with CSAM in the vehicle.
The statute of limitations on a portion of the alleged crimes had expired in 1988. However, sufficient evidence found at the Orangevale property was made recently enough to allow prosecutors to press charges. Victims of the abuse were 5 years old and younger when the abuse began, and California authorities who tracked down some of the victims, now adults, said the abuse lasted a decade. “The victims never told anyone about the abuse other than their spouses,” the Sacramento District Attorney’s Office said.
How many children were involved in the abuse and how Theodore and James knew the children has not so far been reported.
Theodore will spend the rest of his life in prison
On Jan. 7, Theodore was sentenced to 100 years in prison on 14 counts related to the abuse. James, meanwhile, was sentenced to 23 years because the statute of limitations has expired on some of his alleged crimes. The Sacramento DA says James produced CSAM as recently as 2010. “Although nothing can bring them back what they lost,” the Orangevale property’s new owner said when the CSAM was uncovered of the victims, “It’s not too late to have justice for them.”
If you know someone suffering from sexual violence, contact RAINN or the National Sexual Abuse Telephone Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.