Ex-teacher to do time for further porn charges

A former kumu hula and Waiau Elementary teacher who served time in federal prison for possession of child pornography is serving additional time on weekends behind bars for violating terms of his supervised release.

Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Susan Mollway found that Keith Kalani Akana had admitted to viewing pornographic material online, failed to notify the probation officer about it and had online contact with a minor.

Mollway revoked his supervised release and placed him on 30 months of supervised release and 100 days' incarceration, to be served on 50 consecutive weekends at the federal detention center.

Court-appointed attorney DeAnna Dotson said the court's sentence allows Akana to continue working, continue with sex offender treatment and get his life together. "We applaud the judge for showing that type of compassion, and we're hoping the rest of the community and employers see the reason was to allow him to continue to work and get his life back on track," Dotson said.

Akana was initially sentenced in July 2003 to 46 months' imprisonment with three years of supervised release. The sentence was later reduced to 32 months. He began serving his three years of supervised release on April 17, 2006. The violations apparently occurred before he began sex offender treatment in September, Dotson said.

The violations came to light after Akana underwent two separate polygraphs ordered by the U.S. Probation Office.

A probation officer requested that the court revoke Akana's supervised release after he failed to disclose in a timely manner that he had gone on the Internet at a public library and inadvertently accessed images of men in various stages of undress on a couple of occasions. He also admitted to answering Yahoo questions asked online by a minor, including one asking about the average size of the male organ.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Larry Tong argued that common sense and logic shows that Akana had sought out the restricted materials, then failed to disclose his conduct to the probation officer, doing so only after he was administered the polygraphs months later.

Akana said he had not deliberately sought out pornographic sites, which are prohibited when using the computers at public libraries. And he was only answering Yahoo questions, which require that the participant be at least 18 years old.

Dotson told the court Akana had not admitted the incidents to his probation officer earlier because he was afraid of what might happen to him. Dotson argued that the images were not sexually stimulating, and when the images popped up, "he almost felt like he was giving up -- 'I can't do anything, these things come up.'"

Mollway said she found it difficult to accept that it was accidental.