Former state Rep. Keith Farnham has been sued while he languishes in prison by two minors who claim they appear in child pornography found on the Elgin Democrat’s computer.
The minors sued Farnham this week under the pseudonyms “Erin” and “Fiona,” claiming they were “repeatedly raped and sexually assaulted in order to produce child pornography.” They said Farnham used an Illinois House of Representatives computer to download, store and trade some of those images.
The 68-year-old Farnham is serving an eight-year sentence at a low-security federal prison in North Carolina, records show. Lawyers predicted nearly a year ago that the terminally ill former lawmaker would die within three months.
Farnham pleaded guilty in December 2014 to collecting more than 2,700 pictures and videos by trading with other pedophiles online. The images he traded for from his home, from his district office and from a Springfield hotel room included depictions of sadistic and sexual abuse of children as young as 6 months old.
In one email seized by investigators, he boasted to a man whom he was trading child pornography with that he had himself sexually abused a 6-year-old girl.
In another, he wrote, “12 is about as old as I can handle — what I really like is 6, 7, 8.”
That last email is referenced in the new lawsuit.
“Unlike victims of a time-limited trauma, victims of child pornography are continuously aware that their child sex abuse images will never disappear,” the victims’ attorneys wrote in the complaint. “Fiona and Erin have been and will be repeatedly victimized by individuals like the defendant who endlessly participate in the market for child sex abuse images.”
