Child-porn case nets consultant 14-year sentence

‘Remorseful,’ he tells judge

A former Arkansas political consultant who said he was “remorseful, repentant and hopeful,” was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in federal prison for distribution of child pornography.

Harold L. “HL” Moody, 44, of Little Rock, a former spokesman for the Democratic Party of Arkansas and former chairman of the Pulaski County Democratic Party, pleaded guilty in July 2021 to one count of distribution of child pornography.

Moody was indicted in November 2018 following an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations on allegations of using a videoconferencing application to view and share videos of adults raping children, according to court documents, and has been held in federal custody since.

Court records indicated that Moody came to the attention of investigators when he logged into a known and identified child exploitation online chatroom under the username, “B-ZONE,” on Aug. 29, 2018, that was being monitored by an undercover Homeland Security officer. Records said that “B-ZONE” was livestreaming his activity into the meeting and could be seen sitting at a desk in an office, his face clearly visible, holding a glass pipe of the type commonly used to smoke methamphetamine. On several subsequent occasions, court records said, “B-ZONE” was observed in the meeting room streaming, sharing and distributing child pornography to the other users in the meeting room and interacting with others via chat messages as the host of the chatroom.

Despite using a virtual private network (VPN) to mask his IP address, investigators eventually traced “B-ZONE” back to Moody through the use of subpoenas, commercial databases and social media, where he was identified through photographs on his public Facebook page.

At the time of his arrest on Nov. 5, 2018, Moody was employed as a special events coordinator for Pulaski County Youth Services, a position he had held since February 2017. He also founded Warhorse Creative Consulting, a consulting firm that assisted political campaigns and nonprofit entities with communications, event planning and digital media that, according to a Facebook page, appears to have ceased operations following Moody’s 2018 arrest.

On Thursday, Moody was escorted into U.S. Dis

trict Judge Kristine G. Baker’s courtroom by U.S. marshals, where he was greeted by a half dozen or so friends and family members, including his parents and sister, and was seated with his attorney, James Winnfield Wyatt of Little Rock.

Over the course of the nearly two-hour hearing Thursday, it was determined that Moody would be subject to a guideline sentencing range of 14 years to 17 years, 6 months. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kristin Bryant said the government was seeking $39,000 in restitution to be distributed equally among the 13 identified victims — $3,000 to each of the minor victims depicted in the videos Moody shared with others during his time accessing the online meeting room.

Although he did not ask for a specific sentence, Wyatt asked Baker to consider a downward variance below the low end of the guideline range, citing Moody’s age. Under federal sentencing statutes, the mandatory minimum sentence for his crime is five years in prison.

“He’s still a relatively young man,” Wyatt said. “He can still do great things in this world given the opportunity.”

Bryant objected to a variance, saying the government’s position was a guideline sentence would be appropriate.

Moody, reading from a prepared statement, spoke for nearly 20 minutes, talking about the high-powered life he had led in politics and the mix of unresolved childhood trauma and drug addiction that led to his downfall, emphasizing to Baker that he was not trying to excuse his actions but to explain how they came about as he tried to deal with “the most severe depression of my life.”

“Instead of asking for help I chose to self-medicate with methamphetamine,” he said. “To be clear, meth is not responsible for my actions. … While I believe meth lowered my inhibitions and served as a key to open doors I would never have opened otherwise, I alone am responsible.”

Moody said his mental health struggles had plagued him since childhood, feeling abandoned by his father and terrorized by his then-stepfather, “Charlie,” who he said punished him when he was 3 by leaving him in a Dumpster.

“I soiled my pants and as punishment, he pulled to the side of the road and put me in a half-empty garbage Dumpster,” Moody said. “He closed the lid and left me in the dark. Maybe I was in there for 10 minutes or maybe it was two hours but I do remember the fear. … That fear stayed with me for 40 years.”

He said the whole family lived in fear of Charlie, describing him as a “monster, whose physical and emotional abuse served as a prison of sorts,” until his mother divorced him when Moody was 12.

“We were physically free but the legacy of fear and shame remained,” he said growing emotional. “As I grew older I was afraid people would figure out that I wasn’t good or smart, that I was gay and worse, that I was not worthy of love.”

In 2017, Moody said, his depression raging out of control, he turned to methamphetamine just as it seemed that he had reached a pinnacle of success, having been named employee of the year at his job, given “a glowing performance review” and his consulting business thriving in its first year.

“I first tried meth in 2017,” he said. “By 2018 my life was in shambles … I destroyed my life and meth was the bulldozer I used to do it.”

Saying, “I don’t doubt his remorse for a second,” Bryant pointed out that Moody was a host in a “highly sophisticated” chatroom that the uninitiated would be unable to “just happen upon.”

“It’s a chatroom you have to earn your right to,” she said. “To become a host in a room like this you must prove yourself … you have material that’s new, that’s not readily available on the internet.”

As she announced the sentence, Baker cited the sophisticated offense conduct and the number of victims as factors calling for a guideline sentence. In addition to 168 months in prison, Baker ordered Moody to serve five years on supervised release when he completes his sentence and to participate in a psycho-sexual evaluation, sex offender counseling, and mental health treatment.

”All of the things that you have experienced that may have led you to this point haven’t gone away,” she said. “If you find yourself back at those points in your life again, don’t go down that rabbit hole. This is not a way to deal with that. It’s not.”