No prison time for former NPR staffer charged in child porn case

Former NPR science editor David Malakoff, who pleaded guilty in March to a felony child pornography possession charge, will not go to prison, a U.S. District Court judge decided Thursday. Instead, Judge Ellen Huvelle sentenced him to five years’ probation, 600 hours of community service and registration as a sex offender for 25 years. Evidence was found that he had illicit materials on his NPR computer between April and June of 2008; he resigned from NPR that June. Malakoff said he was raped as a boy and was attempting to relive the experience. Huvelle also ordered Malakoff to write a letter to the subject of one of the pornographic videos that showed a young girl being raped by her father. “You have more in common than you think or she thinks,” Huvelle told Malakoff at the sentencing in Washington, D.C.