Ex-professor convicted of child porn gets 3 years after probation violation

A former Wheaton College professor, who previously avoided incarceration after being convicted of child pornography charges, is headed to prison for violating his probation.

Calling him a "very intelligent, yet very flawed individual," DuPage Judge John Kinsella Wednesday sentenced 65-year-old Donald Ratcliff to three years in prison.

The former religious studies professor originally was charged in March 2012 after Carol Stream police found more than 500 images of child pornography on at least three of his seven home computers and three DVDs containing pornographic videos.

Wednesday's sentencing hearing was actually the third time he has been sentenced since pleading guilty to aggravated child pornography in August 2013.

Kinsella first sentenced Ratcliff to 42 months in prison.

A short time later, Kinsella conceded he misunderstood some of the evidence presented during the original hearing and reduced Ratcliff's sentence to 180 days in jail and four years of sex-offender probation, which prohibited Ratcliff from accessing the internet without monitoring software.

Assistant State's Attorney Mike Pawl said Wednesday that on March 18, Ratcliff, who was still in outpatient sex-offender counseling, petitioned the DuPage County probation department to allow him to use a computer outfitted with monitoring software. He received his computer March 28.

Retired senior probation officer Laura Skach testified Wednesday that on April 23, Ratcliff left her a damning voicemail.

"He said he had gone somewhere on his computer that he probably shouldn't have and he needed to speak to me," Skach said from the witness stand. "He said it was only for a few seconds, but he didn't want to hide anything anymore."

Skach then detailed how the monitoring software showed Ratcliff spent nearly four hours, between 11:22 p.m. April 22 and 3:14 a.m. April 23, downloading a copy of the 1954 film "Garden of Eden" and editing clips containing nude children to enhance the quality.

According to IMDB.com, the 1954 film is about a mother and young daughter who flee her abusive husband and take shelter in a nudist colony.

Skach said that while the film itself is not pornographic, Ratcliff was specifically seeking and editing the footage containing nude and partially nude children for his own sexual satisfaction.

She said Ratcliff admitted to watching the movie for sexual gratification and said he chose the film, hoping if probation officials were alerted by the monitoring software that they would think the website featuring the film was a religious site.

"He thought it was a safe place to search," she said.

Kinsella said he was sentencing Ratcliff to the minimum three years in prison because Ratcliff had followed through with all court-ordered treatment and had no violations during the first three years of his probation.

Between his first time in jail in 2013 and the time he has been in custody since May 18, Ratcliff will receive 194 days credit toward the sentence, meaning he may actually serve about another year in an Illinois prison. He is already a registered sex offender and must remain one for the rest of his life.