Judge orders child-porn suspect to stay in jail

A 63-year-old Little Rock man accused of filming himself having sex with a 17-yearold girl as she was suspended from his bedroom ceiling by handcuffs must remain jailed until his trial on a charge of producing child pornography, a federal judge said last week.

An attorney for Terry Lee Harmon argued that he should be allowed to remain free, noting that the girl was a “prostitute.”

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristin Bryant argued that the girl is a minor and as such cannot consent. Bryant also argued that despite the girl claiming to be 18 in notices she posted online in a forum connecting “sugar daddies and sugar babies,” Harmon knew she lived with her parents and regularly picked her up after school at Central High to engage in trysts with her.

An FBI agent, Richard Aaron Hurst, testified last Monday that the girl’s mother contacted him in late November after finding information on her daughter’s phone that linked her to Harmon, whom she met online.

Hurst said the girl then told agents that she had sex with Harmon three times, each time after he picked her up near the school. She reported that after the first time, he drove her to a drugstore and gave her his credit card so she could buy a pill to prevent her from becoming pregnant. The second time, he told her to wear a “school uniform” and asked her to call him “daddy,” Hurst said.

The agent said that in videos Harmon surrendered to agents during the Jan. 19 execution of a search warrant at his house on Holly Hill Road, near Boyle Park, the girl could be seen wearing the designated outfit while chained to a device that hung from the ceiling. Hurst said the girl was paid $100 to $200 for each encounter.

In conversations with the girl that were found on Harmon’s mobile phone, he told her, “I want to guide and protect you as you grow into a woman,” and that “you’ll learn not to trust men,” the agent said.

Hurst also described conversations Harmon had about the girl with a female, who hasn’t yet been identified. In those conversations, found on his phone, he told the female that the 17-year-old “needs a coach. … She has so much to learn.”

Defense attorney Grant Ballard presented witnesses in an effort to show that Harmon isn’t a danger to the community or a flight risk. Among them was a manager at a Jacksonville liquor store where Harmon works, and a retired nurse in Cabot who testified that she has occasionally paid Harmon $1,000 a week to cook, clean her house and take her to appointments. She said she knew he had been in federal prison on drug charges but was surprised to learn he had four felony convictions in state court, and that he was accused of assaulting a woman with whom he had a relationship two years ago.

“I just don’t believe that,” the woman testified. “He is not that kind of person.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Tom Ray asked if it would surprise her that Harmon had tested positive for methamphetamine, codeine and morphine.

“Oh no, I did not know that,” she replied.

Harmon’s sister also testified on his behalf, calling him a “gentle giant.”

Bryant countered that Harmon has a criminal history dating back to age 23 and that three of his felony convictions were committed while he was on parole or under supervision.

Ray determined that Harmon posed too great of a flight risk, as well as too great a risk of danger to the community, to be set free.