Crime

Former Subway Spokesman Jared Fogle Sentenced to More Than 15 Years for Child Pornography and Sex With Minor

Judge: "The level of perversion and lawlessness exhibited by Mr. Fogle is extreme"

By

Published on November 19, 2015 02:00PM EST

Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced to 15 years, 8 months in prison for possession of child pornography and traveling across state lines to have sex with a minor, PEOPLE confirms.

Fogle was taken into custody immediately after the hearing, according to the Indianapolis Star. He was handcuffed behind his back and led out of the courtroom as his family members hugged and cried, the paper reports.

When she sentenced Fogle, U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, who also sentenced Fogle to a lifetime of supervision, said, “The level of perversion and lawlessness exhibited by Mr. Fogle is extreme.”

Pratt added, “What a gift to have such a professional windfall in your lap.”

Before the sentencing, Dr. John Bradford, a forensic psychiatrist testifying for the defense, said that Fogle had a compulsive eating disorder that morphed into “hypersexuality” after he famously lost weight, according to Reuters.

Defense attorney Jeremy Margolis said, “He traded a horrible food addiction for a horrible sex addiction,” Reuters reports.

Sentence Longer Than What Prosecutors Asked For

Fogle had agreed to plead guilty to the charges in August. As part of the agreement, prosecutors agreed to ask for no more than 12½ years in prison while the defense agreed not to ask for less than five years.

Last Thursday, Fogle’s attorneys and prosecutors filed separate sentencing memorandums, with Fogle’s attorneys asking for the minimum sentence and prosecutors asking for the max.

His sentence was ultimately longer than what prosecutors asked for. Pratt said 12½ years “does not sufficiently account for the defendant’s criminal conduct.”

According to the government’s pre-sentencing filing, “Fogle went to great lengths to engage in commercial sex acts with underage minors.” It adds that “he continually communicated with the prostituted minors in his attempts to find even younger children for sex. He specified the ages he wanted, including 14 and 15 year olds.”

In addition to sex with children, the filing states that “Fogle has paid for commercial sexual activity with adults on hundreds of occasions.”

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

The pre-sentencing filing from Fogle’s layers stated that Fogle “is painfully aware of the fact that he has impacted the lives of minor victims, hurt those closest to him, and, for all practical purposes, destroyed the life he worked to build over the last 18 years.”

The filing stated that, according to a forensic psychologist, Fogle “suffers from hypersexuality and alcohol abuse/dependence.”

It added that the psychiatrist found “weak evidence” of pedophilia, and that Fogle is “very treatable.”