Anais Gutierrez
Mark Salling pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography on Tuesday. The ‘Glee’ alum is facing up to seven years in prison after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
Salling’s plea agreement was filed Tuesday in federal court in Los Angeles and follows the actor’s arrest last December. Salling was previously charged with child pornography possession before as well as other sexual charges.
Guilty on child pornography charges
Mark Salling, who jump to stardom on Fox’s hit show ‘Glee’ as Noah “Puck” Puckerman from 2009 to 2015, pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and faces four to seven years in prison, with 20 years supervised release.
Along with the prison time, Salling will also pay $50,000 in restitution to each of the victims who request it and register as a sex offender.
The actor was first arrested for possession of child pornography in December 2015. His residence was searched by the Los Angeles Internet Crimes Against Children Taskforce.
Salling was indicted on two counts of child porn and charged with receiving and possessing child porn on his laptop and a USB flash drive in May 2016.
In the objects seized from his home in the raid, including a laptop, USB flash drive, and a hard drive. The authorities found thousands of images and videos depicting child porn. Salling first pleaded not guilty in June 2016, after the case was referred to federal authorities.
Prosecutors and the defense reached a plea agreement, which was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Tuesday. In it, Salling pleaded guilty to “one felony count of possession of child pornography involving a prepubescent minor.”
According to court documents, authorities found more than 50,000 images and videos of child porn and erotica were found on his laptop. In addition to about 4,000 images and 160 videos of child porn found on his USB flash drive.
Not the first sexual scandal
This is not Salling’s first brush with the law. Last March, he allegedly reached a $2.7million dollar settlement with a woman who had sued him for sexual battery.
Then there’s also a 2011 incident. Another woman claimed he forced her to have unprotected sex and then when she confronted him several days later, he pushed her to the ground injuring her knees.
According to reports, the case was settled midway through trial after the woman dropped the sexual battery claim. The actor admitted to negligently causing her to fall and injure herself. She is not believed to have been the woman who tipped off the authorities.
Glad it didn’t work out
While the news comes as shocking, there’s one of his former ‘Glee’ co-stars knew Salling was always trouble and wasn’t shocked when he was arrested in 2015 for child pornography possession. And that’s Naya Rivera.
Rivera also had a turbulent three-year relationship with Salling while the Ryan Murphy show was in production. In fact, the actress addressed both the relationship and the shocking incident in her 2016 memoir, ‘Sorry Not Sorry: Dreams, Mistakes and Growing Up.’
“I can’t say I was totally shocked, but still–WTF?” Rivera wrote.
“My son’s nanny actually told me about it when the story broke. Then I had no doubt that God really did have my back along the way.”
In her memoir, Rivera said that things between them were off from the start. Rivera played cheerleader Santana Lopez on the show. She said their first date was in 2009, but it wasn’t too pleasant.
According to Rivera, Salling got stoned and took her to In-N-Out Burger, then to Fright Fest at Six Flags, where he took a slew of pictures with performers at the park but none with her.
Still, the two dated for another three years and kept the relationship secret because Salling’s publicist said it would hurt his heartthrob image to be known as having a girlfriend. Rivera claims that during the relationship, he also pushed her to use drugs and that he also cheated.
The end of the relationship as recounted by Rivera
He finally ended the relationship, which devastated Rivera at the time.
In her memoir, Rivera was able to write, “When Mark dumped me, I thought it was the worst thing ever, but can you imagine if that didn’t happen? And I was laying there in bed when the battering ram came through the door?”
“I think everyone should have that one relationship where you look back and ask yourself, ‘What the hell was I thinking?’ You’ll learn something and you won’t regret it,” she writes.
“Unless, of course, that relationship was with someone who had a sizable stash of child porn on his computer. Then, by all means, regret everything.”
The actress has recently been in the news, not for her romance with Salling but for calling off her divorce from her estranged husband Ryan Dorsey. The couple wed in 2014 and share a 2-year-old son.
Earlier this week, she posted an adorable picture of the three of them on Instagram. It seems to confirm rumors that they may be trying to work things out.
Source: Teen Vogue
