NEWS- Plea time: White separatist guilty of child porn

Kevin Strom pleaded guilty to child porn possession.
PHOTO FROM HIS WEBSITE

Disputing descriptions of himself in the media as a neo-Nazi and white supremacist, Stanardsville resident Kevin Alfred Strom, 51, has pleaded guilty to something equally distasteful in most circles: child pornography.

On Monday, January 14, Strom pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville to one count of possession of child pornography. As part of his plea, four counts of receiving child porn were dismissed.

Strom, jailed for over a year, could receive a maximum of 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine when he's sentenced April 21. He was indicted January 3, 2007, and has been in jail for over a year.

In October, Judge Norman K. Moon threw out two charges against Strom for enticing a minor to perform sexual acts after the prosecution's details about his alleged obsession with a 10-year-old Orange County girl fell short of the judge's view of a compelling case.

Former wife Elisha Strom testified about finding Strom in their Stanardsville home naked and aroused with photos on his computer of teen girls, who were singers in the white nationalist movement and whose heads were superimposed onto the bodies of even younger girls. A separate charge of witness intimidation, an alleged physical attack on Mrs. Strom, was also dismissed.

Mrs. Strom was in court Monday to watch her husband plead guilty, and afterward, sat down with the Hook for an interview. {See adjacent story]

Kevin Strom founded the National Vanguard, a white nationalist organization dedicated to protecting the rights and racial purity of Caucasians, after his split with the West Virginia-based National Alliance. Before his ouster from the National Alliance, Strom was seen as the group's intellectual leader and the protegé of its founder, William Pierce, whose book, The Turner Diaries, blamed Jews, foreigners, and blacks for America's ills and inspired homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh.

When Judge Moon asked Kevin Strom whether he'd been threatened to agree to plead guilty, Strom said he had received threats in jail, but he doesn't think they're about his guilty plea.

"They have more to do with the media describing me as a white supremacist," declared Strom, who advocates separate areas for "endangered" whites. "I deeply resent the way I've been characterized in the press. I'm no more a white supremacist than the Dalai Lama is a Tibetan supremacist."

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