A South Florida man is defending himself in court after being charged with taking P0*nographic photographs of his three young daughters and sharing them by saying that the photos are standard family portraits for a nudist family.
A grand jury didn’t agree with the assessment of Brian Martens and voted to indict the 53-year-old on one count of producing child p****graphy and one count of receiving child p****graphy.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Bill Matthewman viewed the photographs during a hearing Wednesday in federal court in West Palm Beach.
“Several of these photos the court has reviewed are lascivious. … They are, in the court’s opinion, sexually explicit,” Matthewman said.
Martens is being held without bail because he is a flight risk and he poses “a clear risk of danger to the community, and specifically to his daughters.”
According to prosecutors, the girls were between ages 8 and 12 when the photographs were taken.
James Eisenberg, Marten’s attorney, said that his client hired a professional family photographer to take the shots while he was living at a nudist colony.
“The girls have no clothes on … but they’re not doing anything of a s*xual nature,” Eisenberg said. “If they were young ladies who had clothing on, no one would consider them P0*nographic. Totally unclad … is the normal state of all the people who live there. In the context that everybody in this family are naturists … these photos are not lewd or P0*nographic in any way.”
Martens’ attorney did, however, agree that one photo the judge described as a closeup of a girl’s private part area, to be P0*nographic, but claimed Martens did not know the shot was taken and did not give permission for such a photo.
But federal agents found that this was not the case.
Homeland Security Investigations agents took notice of Martens earlier this year when they found the photos of his daughters on a computer belonging to Leslie Vanaman, 44, a neighbor in the private Sunsport Gardens Family Naturist Resort in Loxahatchee Groves.
The owner of A Shade of Grey Photography, who billed himself as a family portrait photographer despite a seeming reference to the popular er*tic novel 50 Shades of Grey, is serving 60 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to child p****graphy charges, including photographs of the Martens girls.
Agents discovered Martens had signed numerous releases and received and shared numerous P0*nographic images of children. Investigators also uncovered emails between Martens, the photographer and another man discussing the photographer’s “craft” and “the sensuality and se*uality” of the images.
Martens, who has pleaded not guilty, is facing between 15 and 30 years in federal prison if convicted of the child P0*n production charge, and five to 20 years if convicted of receiving child p****graphy.
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