Prison Transfer: Subway’s Former Pitchman Jared Fogle Is Moved to Colorado
A prison transfer is in store for Jared Fogle, the former public face of the Subway restaurant franchise, just one month after he was convicted on various counts of child pornography. After 15 years as the spokesperson for the chain, the 38-year-old Fogle will now officially begin his new decade-and-a-half-plus inmate stint at an FBI federal prison outside of Denver, Colorado.
During sentencing, the man better known to many as Jared and his defense team had requested that he be permitted to transfer to and serve his time at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Englewood facility in Littleton, Colorado, according CBS News‘ WTTV affiliate out of Indianapolis, Indiana, in order to join its sex offender program. While U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt conceded to this request during his November 19 sentencing, this prison transfer was dependent upon receiving the approval of the FBI.
#JaredFogle moved to #Colorado prison https://t.co/Fin0WMypZt
— What? Wake Up! (@whatwakeup) December 18, 2015
With this transfer, Jared joins 965 federal prisoners at Englewood, including Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois Governor who has been serving time since 2012 for his role in soliciting bribes for political appointments.
Fogle first agreed to his prison sentence in August by pleading guilty to single counts of travelling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, as well as distribution and receipt of child pornography, CBS noted. At the time, he acknowledged that he paid for sex at least twice — with 16- and 17-year-old girls — in addition to allowing Russel Taylor, the head of his Anti-Obesity campaign, to transfer pornography featuring other minors to his collection. For his part, Taylor, who is believed to have used hidden cameras to film minors, was sentenced to 27 years on 12 counts of child exploitation and one count of distributing child pornography.
“The awful reality is that the defendant and Mr. Fogle shared a mutual perversion,” said Judge Pratt at the time of Taylor’s prison sentencing, also per CBS.
It was Judge Pratt, among others, who the Indianapolis Star noted raised strong objections to University of Ottawa forensic psychiatrist John Bradford‘s testimony that Fogle suffered “mild or infrequent fantasies about pre-pubertal children,” and thus suffered only from “mild pedophilia.”
“There’s no such thing as being a mild pedophile,” said Pratt. “That’s not a diagnosis.”
“This is demeaning to what children experience,” Ed Pereira, a sex offender counselor with the Family Service Society, told the Star, backing up Pratt’s assertion. “Any sexual abuse is about betrayal, self-centeredness. It leaves children questioning their worth.”
Ironically, Bradford and Jared’s defense team also attempted to argue that his sexual deviance was caused by hunger due to longterm exposure to his famed “Subway Diet,” according to the New York Post.
“Once [Fogle] lost weight, it seemed as though in a short time he had hyper-sexuality,” said Bradford in his testimony. “There are brain disorders that can be associated with sexual drive.”
Officially, Fogle’s lawyers are appealing his sentence on the grounds that Jared’s punishment is “longer than the maximum term prosecutors agreed to pursue as part of his plea deal,” noted CBS News. Fogle, whose official release date comes in July of 2029, has already had a prison transfer from Henderson, Kentucky to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, prior to this latest move.
[Photo by Joey Foley/Getty Images]
