MONROE — A Juda man who faced 15 felonies related to possessing and sharing child sexual abuse images entered a plea deal in the case Feb. 21 in Green County Circuit Court, with his autism diagnosis a key factor in the agreement.
Shad Joseph Hanson, 22, was charged last May with six Class C felony counts of child sexual exploitation and nine Class D felony counts of possessing child pornography.
As part of his plea deal, he entered a four-year deferred prosecution on one felony child sexual exploitation charge and pleaded guilty to two downgraded Class I felony charges of possessing child pornography.
Josann Reynolds, the Dane County judge assigned to the case, sentenced Hanson to one year in jail, to be followed by three years on probation. Conditions of a $20,000 surety bond in the case remain in effect, including no unsupervised contact with children and no access to social media or the internet.
Hanson is also ordered to comply with lifetime supervision as a registered sex offender.
District Attorney Craig Nolen said Hanson is diagnosed with autism and this was a factor in the plea agreement he reached with defense attorney Jacob Manian.
Manian presented compelling research that people diagnosed with autism who start collecting child sexual abuse imagery do not fully understand it is wrong, Nolen said.
“They have the inability to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate (social interaction),” Nolen said.
Hanson “kind of fell down a rabbit’s hole of behavior.”
“Not to say that autism is an excuse. It’s that we try to develop an appropriate balance. ... I think we struck an appropriate balance in this case in light of (Hanson’s) individual characteristics,” Nolen said.
According to the criminal complaint, Hanson shared sexually explicit photos and videos involving prepubescent children as young as toddlers. The investigation into Hanson began with a cybertip in December 2018, provided to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and subsequently to the Internet Crimes Against Children unit of the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation.
Through warrants and subpoenas, and in coordination with state agents, a Green County detective assigned to the case in February 2019 gained access to online accounts associated with the IP address at Hanson’s home on Brunkow Road in rural Juda.
Hanson shared photos and videos of child sexual abuse through the social media app Snapchat under the username “shenison2,” the detective found. Hanson also shared selfie photos and identifying details about himself, like his age and that he lived with his grandparents and had attended Rockford College.
The chat logs for the “shenison2” account contained a “large quantity of child pornography,” according to the detective’s report.
The social media accounts Hanson shared images which do not belong to anyone local, Nolen said.
“We did send some referrals to other jurisdictions,” including in Tennessee, he said, adding that he was not aware that anyone had been charged yet as a result.
In one chat, “Shenison2” shared a photo of a toddler, followed by the comment, “I got that offline.” The detective interpreted this to mean that Hanson had possibly taken the photo and the toddler “could be a victim of assault” by Hanson.
In the chat logs the detective reviewed, Hanson also mentioned having sexually assaulted a child several years earlier.
But Nolen said the origin of the “offline” toddler photo and Hanson’s assertion that he sexually assaulted a child were not substantiated.
When interviewed by police, Hanson said he engaged in “fantasy” talk with other SnapChat users and denied ever being “hands-on” with children.
Those with a high-functioning autism diagnosis, or Asperger’s Syndrome, “are much more likely to be victims rather than victimizers, although their behavior may give the impression of the latter for those who don’t know them or their disability,” wrote Mark J. Mahoney, a New York attorney who specializes in representing clients with Asperger’s Syndrome who face charges related to inappropriate sexual behavior.
In a research paper on the topic, Mahoney stresses that Asperger’s Syndrome is not a predictor of pedophilia or inherently associated with sexual perversion.
Rather, traits associated with the developmental disorder can make those who have it susceptible to finding and collecting child sexual abuse imagery, which is so widespread and easily accessible online that a New York Times investigation called it “a crisis at a breaking point.” In 2018, tech companies reporting 45 million images or videos of children being sexually abused, more than double the previous year.
Hallmarks of autism include the inability to read emotion or understand non-verbal communication, even while longing for meaningful relationships, and intense absorption in narrow topics and collecting information.
“The line between legal and illegal in the world of online pornography may be especially blurry for someone without an inherent understanding of social mores and taboos,” wrote reporter Anat Rubin in a 2017 investigation into child pornography cases against autistic defendants, published by the nonprofit journalism organization The Marshall Project.
“Some pursue their curiosity well beyond that line, viewing and downloading thousands of images of children — many of them prepubescent, some much younger. Until it is clearly explained to them, clinicians say, many cannot fathom what most people intuit: that the children in the pictures and videos are the victims of horrific abuse,” Rubin wrote.