Child Pornography Trial Begins For Beverly Art Studio Owner

CHICAGO —The long-awaited bench trial for a prominent Beverly art studio owner accused of downloading child pornography began Tuesday in Bridgeview. James Sonntag, 43, is being tried before Cook County Judge Colleen Hyland, on 12 felony counts of possession and dissemination of child pornography. Sonntag was arrested in June 2016 after police traced an IP address to Sonntag’s home, where they said child pornography had been downloaded onto Sonntag’s personal laptop.

Sonntag was set for a jury trial to begin this week, but turned down a deal that would have sent him to the Illinois Department of Corrections for six years in exchange for a guilty plea. There was another about face when Sonntag’s attorneys opted for a bench trial that began Tuesday afternoon, said Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th), who has attended Sonntag’s pretrial hearings for the past three years.

On June 15, 2016, investigators from the Cook County Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, went to Sontagg’s Morgan Park home in the 2300 block of West 110th Place armed with a search warrant. Police claim to have found photos and videos containing exploitative images of children less than 13 years old engaged in various sex acts, including bondage. The contraband material was downloaded off the eMule peer-to-peer sharing network, prosecutors said.

Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Holly Grosshaus characterized the videos said to be found on Sonntag’s laptop as “repulsive" in her opening statement.

“Technology is great, the Internet is a great tool,” Grosshaus said, “but technology in the hands of the wrong person poses a serious threat to children in our community and a serious problem for law enforcement.”

Sontagg’s co-counsel, attorney Jon Neuleib, stated that while it wasn’t actually technically illegal to download child pornography, it was only illegal to “knowingly” download images depicting children engaged in sexual acts.

“He didn’t know,” Neulieb said. “There has to be sharing … investigators could not connect sharing to Mr. Sonntag.”

The trial’s first witness, Lt. Adam Zimmer, a detective with the Evergreen Park Police Department and a supervisor on the ICAC task force, said that investigators first became aware of child pornography being downloaded to a Comcast IP address, later identified as belonging to a computer in Sonntag’s residence, on Feb. 16,016. The downloads from eMule , which enables users to share digital files, continued through June 6, 2016. Investigators developed log files every time child pornography videos were downloaded onto Sonntag’s laptop, the detective said.

Portions of six videos allegedly found on Sonntag’s laptop were played for the judge. Neuleib objected, stating the videos were “hearsay” and were downloaded by a “third-party cache buddy.” He was overruled.

The judge watched the videos depicting child pornography being played on a large flat screen TV turned toward the bench. Although the videos were not visible to members of the public sitting in the courtroom, some audio could be heard, including an adult voice briefly shushing a child.

Foresman also took Zimmer through the morning of June 15, 2016, when police arrived at Sonntag’s home with a search warrant. Zimmer said when Comcast returned a subpoena identifying the IP address as coming from Sonntag’s residence, investigators sought a grand jury warrant.

“[Sonntag] was in his backyard. He was cooperative and showed us the computers in his basement,” the detective testified. “He pointed out a work computer and his personal laptop.”
Zimmer said a window was open showing eMule files being downloaded at the time of the warrant.

The video files were downloaded in multiple parts. Zimmer testified that Sonntag provided the passwords for the two computers, as well as for the home’s wifi.

According to the detective, Sonntag told police that he downloaded music and “lots of porn” from the peer-sharing site but didn’t always “look at the names” of the files being downloaded.

“We asked him to estimate the amount of child pornography he had on his computer, and he said ‘about 25 files,’” the detective said.

Sonntag was brought to the Evergreen Park police station later that morning, where he was interviewed by Zimmer. The defense attorneys and Hyland watched a replay of the interview on a laptop placed on the defense table.

During his cross-examination, Neuleib drew attention the detective’s initial police report, stating that his client “withheld nothing.”

“[Sonntag] deletes pornography files that he doesn’t want to keep,” Neuleib said, reading from the police report. “He finds child pornography repulsive and gets rid of [the files].”

The trial will resume Wednesday in Bridgeview.