Us is reporting that Mark Salling has pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography and will spend four to seven years in prison, proving that if you’re a minor enough celebrity charged with a serious enough crime, you can still be convicted.
According to the plea agreement obtained by Us, the Glee alum, 35, has agreed to serve four to seven years in jail. He must also register as a sex offender and cannot have communication with anyone under the age of 18 unless in the presence of a parent or legal guardian. Upon his release, he must stay 100 feet away from schoolyards, parks, public swimming pools, playgrounds and video arcade venues. He also faces “20 years’ supervised release.”
Is it just me, or were these laws written a while ago and never updated. “Video arcade venues?” I’m pretty sure the only arcades that exist today, other than like, Chuck E. Cheese, are nostalgia places aimed at sad adults. When is the last time you heard a kid say “Hey, let’s all go hang out at the arcade”?
The actor was arrested in December 2015 after the Internet Crimes Against Children LAPD task force was tipped off that he had an extensive collection of child porn at his home in Sunland, California. Authorities later discovered more than 50,000 photos and videos on his laptop and another 4,000 on a flash drive. Salling was cut from the film Gods and Secrets following his indictment.
Okay, so that’s fucked up. I think we can all agree that’s fucked up. Like, I don’t have a joke here or anything, that’s just sad and disturbing.
Salling’s ex-girlfriend and former Glee costar Naya Rivera wrote in her 2016 memoir, Sorry Not Sorry, that she wasn’t “totally shocked” by the charges against him. “But still — WTF? Then I had no doubt that God really did have my back along the way,” she wrote.
I mean… He was accused of sexual assault before, so he already doesn’t seem like the nicest guy. You have to be a much bigger star before you can get away with this level of scumbaggery unpunished.