The sentencing of David Yellen, a youth gymnastics photographer from Royal Oak convicted of distributing child pornography, was postponed Friday to determine whether gymnasts will be allowed to speak in federal court.
A last-minute dispute over who qualifies as a victim delayed until Nov. 22 punishment for Yellen, who prosecutors say also spent two decades taking pictures of the bare feet and genital areas of approximately 1,100 children in leotards.
The sentencing by Chief U.S. District Judge Sean Cox was postponed more than one year after Yellen, 59, was arrested. The arrest and criminal case raised fears and concerns within a gymnastics community already reeling from crimes committed by former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.
Yellen faces a maximum 20-year sentence after admitting he made files containing child pornography available in an online peer-to-peer network. As part of an agreement to plead guilty, Yellen admitted having more than 600 images of child porn, including photos of prepubescent minors and sadistic and masochistic imagery.
Victims in the child porn images live outside the United States and prosecutors have been unable to contact them, according to a court filing Friday. Prosecutors want to let some gymnasts “who are victims of Yellen’s conduct” speak at the sentencing hearing but Yellen’s lawyer objected to the request because the photographer’s conduct involving gymnasts was not criminal. That conduct, according to one victim’s letter to the judge, described how Yellen befriended young girls, took inappropriate photos and gave them gifts.
The photos of gymnasts’ clothed genital areas are not considered child pornography, his lawyer, Margaret Sind Raben, said.
“They are considered child erotica,” Raben wrote in an email to The Detroit News. “In the U.S., it is not a crime to possess/distribute child erotica. The (government) knows the difference.
“David’s private files of the gymnasts were NEVER available to anyone else and will be destroyed by the federal agents when his case is concluded,” she added.
Yellen was portrayed by prosecutors as a predator with a foot fetish who victimized children as young as 3 years old in the nation’s gymnastics community at the same time as Nassar. The former MSU doctor who was accused of sexually assaulting more than 500 young women, teenage and prepubescent girls under the guise of medical treatment over more than two decades and is serving a life prison sentence.
Yellen faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years, and prosecutors say he should spend 15 1/2 years in federal prison followed by a term of supervised release. The median sentence for a federal child porn crime nationwide is seven years and more than nine years in Michigan, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
Yellen never denied his guilt or responsibility for an addiction to pornography, his lawyer said. She noted that Yellen passed an FBI polygraph test that asked if he had sexual contact with a child as an adult, taken nude images of a child or engaged in sexual activity with a child.
“David answered ‘no’ to each of these questions,” his lawyer wrote.
The academy where Yellen worked is not identified in court filings. But Facebook posts indicate Yellen shot photos and videos at various academies, including Michigan Elite Gymnastics Academy in Novi.
Michigan Elite Gymnastics Academy owner Kim Tanskanen said through a spokesman last year that her gym and a second facility, Grand Blanc Gymnastics Company, had contracted with Yellen for photography services. That relationship lasted about 12 years before Yellen’s arrest.