Pride, guilty of luring underage girl through the Internet, gets 5 years

It was described like a scene from a TV show. An undercover agent posed as a 14 year-old girl on the Internet.

In the scenario, the 37 year-old man drove 125 miles from Crookston, Minn. to Devils Lake to meet the child he’d been chatting with on-line for six months.

When he arrived at the agreed-on meeting place on July 3, 2009, he was met, not by a little 14-year-old girl wearing a red shirt (so he could recognize her), but by police and sheriff’s officers with handcuffs to take him into custody.

He spent two months in jail and the next four months on electronic monitoring, his actions carefully restricted by order of the court.

Initially Gerald Pride claimed he was “not guilty” of the charge of Luring an Underaged Girl by means of the Internet but changed his plea as part of an agreement with the court.

Thursday morning in Northeast District Court Judge Donovan Foughty sentenced Pride to five years to serve one, with four years suspended for four under supervised probation.

Just prior to sentencing, Pride read into the record a lengthy, rambling statement he had written where he accepted responsibility for his actions and also claimed that he was the victim of “entrapment.”

When he was finished, the judge told Pride it would have been better if he hadn’t read his statement.

His attorney, Henry Howe, asked the judge to consider leniency in sentencing Pride. “My client has already experienced significant consequences from this situation. I ask that Mr. Pride be sentenced to time served and probation, giving him credit for not only time served, but also credit for the time he was under virtual house arrest,” Howe said.

Foughty did not agree, “It’s obvious from the statement you just read that you need to start looking at this differently. The way you’re thinking right now, you’re going to keep doing this. You aren’t going to make it on probation. You keep minimizing what you did,” Foughty said to the accused.

As part of the sentencing for the Class B Felony, the judge imposed a lengthy list of conditions to be included in Pride’s four years on supervised probation once he gets out of prison. Those conditions included attending and cooperating with sex offender treatment programs and aftercare if recommended, registering as a sex offender, having no computer or Internet access and only a basic cell phone.

He must allow authorities to search his home at any time with or without a search warrant, regularly attend a self-help group like AA or Sex Addicts Anonymous, submit to random drug testing and initiate no relationship with a child under the age of 18 or a woman who has children under 18 without written permission of his probation officer.

There were many other restrictions imposed on Pride by the judge for the term of his probation and an administrative fine of $750 and supervision fee of $45.

Pride’s car was forfeited but the two computers seized were to be returned. The judge directed one computer was to go back to Pride’s former employer, Altru, and the other to go back to Pride’s wife in Crookston with the understanding that it will not be in the home if Pride is to live there following his time in the Department of Corrections.

The judge ordered destroyed porn tapes seized from Pride’s residence. “He is to have no sexually stimulating material in his possession or to utilize 900 telephone numbers,” the judge added.

Foughty concluded the sentencing hearing by reminding Pride, “You are going to have to start thinking differently. Society has no sympathy for you. Once you get out of prison, they’ll be looking for compliance from you. You could get up to 10 years for what you did. You have to get your head straight or you’re not going to make it.”

He encouraged Pride to obtain the psych reports and evaluations that he’d completed because they may be helpful to him.

Once the judge had finished his remarks, Pride was put into handcuffs and led from the courtroom in custody. He will be transported to Bismarck to serve the next ten months in the state penitentiary.