Ronald Richardson, the 48-year-old Pepsi vendor who police said used his access to Gilmer County schools to photograph female students and used artificial intelligence to turn the images into lewd pornography, told police he would “1,000 percent” do it again.
Detective Daniel Farnham testified during a preliminary hearing that Richardson also told him that he was relieved that one of the girls had reported his activities because he didn’t know “how far it would have gone.” He also admitted to Farnham to fantasizing about dancing with one of the girls and getting her to “say some sexy lines,” according to the transcript released by the court.
Richardson was indicted Wednesday on 76 counts of sexual exploitation of children by a Gilmer County Grand Jury. The indictment offers the first indication of the vast number of photos found by police when they searched his Elijay home.
Richardson has been in jail since his arrest on January 17. After the hearing Gilmer County Judge Mary Elizabeth Priest denied Richardson’s request for bond so he could live in Walker County in a former employer’s trailer.
The judge said she denied Richardson’s bid for release because he posed “a substantial risk that the defendant will commit a felony if released on bond.”
Richardson’s attorney, Gregory Lucas, assured the court that his client would not be a risk to reappear because he would be working construction for his former employer and his son-in-law who are both law enforcement officers. Lucas said he would not be living with children and would have no contact with them. He suggested that Richardson’s bond would limit or forbid his access electronics.
Prosecutor Andrew Healy rejected both provisions, saying that “because of the nature of these crimes,” there was no way to prevent Richardson from getting access to a phone, a tablet or the internet.
Since his arrest, the families of at least 11 students have sued Richardson and the Pepsi Beverage Company. The company is accused of allowing Richardson to have access to Gilmer schools even after students reported him covertly videotaping them walking from the gym to the girls’ locker room at Gilmer County High School.
Richardson allegedly used photos and videos that he secretly recorded of the students and took from the girls’ Facebook and Instagram pages to create sexually explicit content using artificial intelligence. The images obtained by police show victims ages 11 to 50, though the majority were high school aged girls from Gilmer County, Farnham testified.
He did not directly address where Richardson had captured the images of the adult women, though he said some of the images found on Richardson’s devices came from Facebook and Instagram.
The Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office is working with The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and its “Take It Down” tool to monitor and remove the images Richardson created though the tool is limited in its reach, Caroline McGlamry, an attorney representing some of the victims, said in a statement.
“Our clients are having to deal with constant worry that in this digital age, these explicit photographs could be anywhere, and it is very hard, if not impossible, to permanently remove images from the internet,” McGlamry said. “It’s an incredible harm that should have never occurred.”
Thomas Kadri, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia School of Law specializing in cybercrime, said the “Take It Down” tool would not be able to remove explicit content shared on encrypted platforms or access material downloaded to individual devices or stored on iCloud. Though many prominent platforms like TikTok and YouTube participate in the tool, he added, other public-facing platforms that have not integrated the tool into their technology could also potentially keep images.
“This is an area where it can still be obviously devastating and deeply distressing that there’s this unknown about whether your images are still out there and whether they’re circulating,” Kadri said.
Students at Gilmer County High School reported Richardson in September for allegedly filming them as they walked to the girls’ locker room. Though Pepsi initially fired Richardson after the incident, they reinstalled him soon after to service the same route to the middle and high school in the area because they could not find a replacement for him, a parent’s lawsuit claims. The company has declined to comment.
In December, Richardson approached another student asking for images, police said. The student reported the incident, and Richardson was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual exploitation of children.
The DeKalb County District Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case for Gilmer County, did not comment due to the ongoing investigation. Lucas, Richardson’s attorney, declined to comment.
Brian Ridley, superintendent of the Gilmer County Charter Schools, in a statement Thursday said: “We sincerely appreciate the efforts of the Gilmer County Sheriff’s Office and our local district attorney as they continue their work to keep our community safe and bring this individual to justice.”
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