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Former sportscaster pleads guilty to child porn charges

E-mail|Link September 8, 2009 10:40 AM

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff

Former television sportscaster Robert Gamere reluctantly pleaded guilty today to three child pornography charges in US District Court in Boston in a tentative deal that would send him to prison for a mandatory minimum of five years.

Robert Gamere

Gamere, who also hosted the local TV show "Candlepins for Cash" through most of the 1970s, told the court that he agreed to plead guilty because his defense lawyer warned him that the odds of him being acquitted were "200 to 1." As he changed his plea, Gamere railed against federal mandatory minimum sentences, blasting them as undemocratic laws that hurt ordinary citizens.

"If this keeps up, you wouldn't need a judge in that chair, to be honest with you," Gamere said, claiming he would not have faced a mandatory minimum if he had been charged in state court.

Judge William G. Young disagreed.

"You are very sadly mistaken," Young said. "You seem to be in denial."

The 70-year-old pleaded guilty to two counts of transmitting child pornography over the Internet and one count of possession of child pornography. Gamere admitted using the screen name "greatgamere" to transmit a video of child pornography over the Internet. On two dates -- April 5 and 11, 2007 -- he sent the video to a person with the screen name "jdaddy14" in Mobile, Ala. The charges carry a mandatory minimum prison term of five years and a maximum of 30 years.

The one count of possession of child pornography stems from a search of his Brookline apartment on Oct. 30, 2007. The charge does not have a mandatory minimum, but the sentence cannot exceed 10 years.

Young scheduled a formal sentencing for Dec. 8. Gamere remains free on bail.