Daily Mail: Man featured in Time cover story on immigration reform is sentenced to 15 years in prison for child porn and sexually exploiting boy with brain cancer
Roy Naim, 32, was featured in 2012 story ‘We are Americans’
Federal agents found porn depicting boys as young as 9 on his computer
He also admitted to viewing and downloading porn for multiple years
Naim was found out after the arrest of a Louisiana child porn producer who fooled boys into thinking they were video conferencing with teen girls
One of the victims was a teen boy with a brain tumor who attended a summer camp for children with cancer, where Naim was a counselor
A New York man who was once featured in a Time magazine cover story about immigration reform has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for possession of child pornography.
Roy Naim, 32, who was featured in the 2012 story titled ‘We are Americans…just not legally’, was also convicted in 2014 for attempted exploitation.
Federal agents found porn that depicted boys as young as nine years old performing sexual acts on Naim’s computer. He admitted to viewing and downloading the porn for multiple years.
They were led to his Brooklyn home after arresting suspected child porn producer Johnathan Johnson, who fooled underage boys into thinking they were video conferencing with teenage girls and then recorded the acts.
The videos were posted on a website called and was sent to others through email, according to New York Daily News.
One of the victims was a teenage boy who was suffering from a brain tumor. He had attended a camp for children with cancer, where Naim worked as a counselor.
Johnson was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
Naim, who immigrated to the US with his family when he was three years old, was named the ‘Jewish face of the immigration reform struggle’ after he appeared in the Time story.
It was the first time Naim made his undocumented status publicly known.
‘My being public protects me because America loves stories,’ he told The Forward in 2013.
‘And when we hear about a good person — a person who is nice, who cares — we don’t want him deported; we want him in this country.’
Naim will be deported to Israel after completing his sentence.
‘I failed as a human being,’ Naim said in court. ‘The pain of this young victim and his family…I cannot imagine what they’re going through and I’m the cause of all this.’
Naim had been molested by an older cousin when he was 11 years old and struggled with his ‘urges’ in the Orthodox Jewish community, court papers revealed.
He later became the only member of his family not to gain citizenship in the US.
Both were brought up during Naim’s sentencing by Brooklyn federal judge Nicholas Garaufis.
‘He lives in a community where his urges, his needs, sexually, are more than frowned upon. Maybe some of the people in this room could have helped him and should look in the mirror. You know who you are,’ Garaufis said.
‘His entire family was naturalized but he was left out,’ he added. ‘People should look in the mirror about that.’
Naim faced life in prison without the possibility of parole under his charges, which Garaufis called ‘incredibly excessive and irrational’.
Prosecutors had asked the judge to sentence Naim to at least 20 years behind bars.
Instead the judge sentenced Naim to the mandatory minimum time he was required to spend in prison, and said he believed Naim was ‘truly remorseful’.
‘But you have to do more than that,’ he told Naim. ‘You have to come to grips with your evil angels.’
The Jewish face of immigration reform from Yermi Brenner on Vimeo.
FORWARD JULY 28, 2013:
The Jewish Face of the Immigration Reform Struggle
For 25 years, Roy Naim, an undocumented immigrant, led a secretive life. Having no identification papers, he could not drive, rent an apartment or be legally employed. Worst of all, he constantly feared being deported from his home and family. All he did was try to lie low, and somehow get by.
Naim is still undocumented. But in the past year he has been doing anything but lying low. Since June 2012, the young man, who spent his entire adult life in the shadow of society, has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, was featured in a documentary and was interviewed by the New York Daily News. He is constantly on Twitter and Facebook, promoting a new immigration bill that would secure his future as an American.
Naim, 29, an Israeli-born Orthodox Jew, has become the Jewish face of activism for immigration reform.
In many ways he’s an unusual figure among immigrant activists. Three-quarters of the nation’s unauthorized immigrants are Hispanic, along with 11% from Asia, according to a 2009 Pew Research Study. Less than 2% are from the Middle East.
The New York Legal Assistance Group, an organization that offers free legal services, has received 342 applications on behalf of Jewish undocumented immigrants. Many others apply through private attorneys.
“We know there are thousands of undocumented Jews presently residing in New York City,” said Yisroel Schulman, who founded NYLAG in 1990, adding that it works with a network of 150 Jewish, community-based organizations.
Clear data on the number of Jewish illegal immigrants in the United States is not available because most are doing what Naim did for 25 years: living in the shadows of society.
Forward, Sept. 27, 2013:
Jews Downplay Ties to Immigration Advocate Roy Naim After Child Porn Arrest
Two Orthodox groups that aid disabled children are downplaying their ties to a prominent undocumented immigration activist who has been accused of downloading child pornography.
Roy Naim was accused on September 18 in federal court in Brooklyn with admitting to agents during a search of his house that he had child pornography on his laptop. According to the criminal complaint, Naim, who was profiled in a June 2012 Time magazine cover story on undocumented illegal immigrants, said that he had been viewing and downloading child pornography for years. He was released September 19, on a $250,000 bond.
In online profiles, Naim claimed he had worked from 2003 through 2008 at Camp Simcha, a camp for ill Orthodox children that was run by the group Chai Lifeline. The profiles said Naim was a “division head” at the camp. Naim also claimed to have worked as a running coach at the Hebrew Academy for Special Children, a network of Orthodox schools for disabled people, and as a motivational running coach at Yachad, an Orthodox service agency for disabled people.
Hank Sheinkopf, an external spokesman for Camp Simcha, said that the camp is in the process of deciding whether to contact people whose children may have been in contact with Naim about his indictment.
“Camp Simcha has had no contact or involvement with this individual for more than five years,” Sheinkopf said of Naim.
Naim has dozens of friends on the social networking site Facebook who describe themselves as having formerly worked at Camp Simcha.
Mayer Fertig, a spokesman for the Orthodox Union, of which Yachad is a constituent agency, said that, to the best of his knowledge, Naim’s interaction with Yachad was restricted to one 48-hour period in January 2010, when he volunteered at a fundraising program.
“This guy, on this one occasion, had a role as a motivational coach,” Fertig said. He added that Naim likely interacted with adults, and not children, during that fundraiser. “We’ve not heard of any problems. We have alerted our staff; our staff is aware of it. If anything were to come to our attention, we’d take any appropriate measure.”
Naim, who is partially deaf, moved to the United States from Israel with his family when he was 4. The Naims overstayed their visas and settled in the country. He remains an undocumented immigrant. Naim was the subject
of a Forward profile earlier this year when he emerged as a high-profile advocate for undocumented immigrants. The profile described Naim as “the Jewish face of the immigration reform struggle.”Naim did media rounds in June promoting a
game
created by the website DoSomething.org
, meant to dramatize the plight of undocumented immigrants.Richard A. Finkel, Naim’s attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
According to a criminal complaint filed in United States District Court in Brooklyn on Sept. 18, investigators with an arm of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security pursuing child exploitation cases found Naim by tracing an email address that had received child pornography from a person in Louisiana. That email address,
brooklynfun123@gmail.com
, was traced to Naim’s home. Officers from DHS and the New York Police Department searched Naim’s house September 16, according to the complaint. That day, Naim posted two public messages on his Twitter account. At 2:04 p.m., Naim Tweeted: “Sometimes you try so hard and still get slapped harder. Sometimes you just wanna give it up. It is painful. It hurts.” Four minutes, later Naim wrote: “Giving it up….”
* Not All Jewish Faces For Immigration Reform Are Like That.
* When did “immigration reform” become a euphemism for “let everybody in”?
* When a member of the tribe is facing hard time, they collectively sweep into action. As reported in the Jewish Daily Forward, Sheldon Silver was sentenced in May to 12 years for, “collecting millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks.” The judge received a pile of letters begging for leniency. I wouldn’t be surprised if phone calls are also made – some using a carrot, some threatening a stick.
I wonder what calls were made for the pedo, esp. after appearing on the cover of Time.
* ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ was an awakening movie. IT is about all this.
AS usual the Telegraph is censoring comments.
This is ONLY a child tragedy.
No thinking on race, immigration, invasion, the tribe or other such matters allowed.
That’s all down the rabbit hole.
FROM ROY NAIM’S TWITTER ACCOUNT:
* When it comes to #immigration or taking up any cause, the Hebrew words #hineni, I am here, should come to mind.
* It is hard to be a lone visionary, wanting to bring change to a community when the seniors try to bring you down. Yet, you keep pushing.
* One of the most urgent questions to ask daily is “what can I do for someone?”
