A former El Paso County Sheriff’s deputy and investigator with the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has been sentenced to an indeterminate sentence of 10 years to life of sex offender intensive supervised probation for offering to share a pornographic image he created involving a young boy on a child porn message board on the Dark Web.
Donald Fair
El Paso County District Judge David Gilbert sentenced Donald Fair, 45, of Colorado Springs on Tuesday, July 4. Fair pleaded guilty on April 24 to one count of sex assault on a child by a person in a position of trust, a Class 4 felony.
“There is nothing more depraved, nothing more upsetting to the community,” Gilbert told Fair in imposing the sentence agreed upon in the plea agreement that saw lesser charges dismissed. “This is one of the lowest most shameful things that I can imagine.”
The District Attorney’s Office of the 18th Judicial District was appointed special prosecutor in the case. District Attorney George Brauchler was in the courtroom Tuesday for sentencing.
“This outcome is the best we could hope for in this case under current Colorado law,” Brauchler said. “A young innocent child is not further traumatized by testifying and being cross-examined during a trial, and the perpetrator is monitored and given therapy to keep the community safe.
“As long as this charge continues to be eligible for probation with no mandated prison time upon conviction, intensive supervised indeterminate probation is a good result. For this case, for this moment, for these facts, this is justice.”
In August 2017 the Colorado Springs Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children unit was contacted by the Department of Homeland Security to investigate a referral from Interpol of possible child exploitation.
An IP address that was traced to Fair had been used on a hidden services website to seek out others interested in his child pornography. “If this interests you, email me back …. and we can talk,” Fair had posted with an image.
Investigators determined the image was created by Fair and included a young boy.
Fair’s employment with the 4th Judicial District Attorneys’ Office ended when he was arrested.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Christopher Gallo told the court the plea agreement was an appropriate outcome.
“This defendant will stand convicted of sexually assaulting a child,” Gallo said. “If this case went to trial, I would have had to make a very young child testify. The damage that would have inflicted would have been severe to that child. Now that child won’t have to testify, and we’ve taken our best measure that this offender will be in a safe and supervised situation for this community, indefinitely.”
Fair must register as a sex offender.