Eight women who appeared as children in illegal pornography have sued a former Pennsylvania college professor, saying they are owed damages because he owned and traded images of them being sexually abused.
The women, who are given pseudonyms in the lawsuit, accuse Kirk Nesset, a former English and creative writing professor at Allegheny College in Meadville, of harming them by possessing and trading their pornographic images.
“Victims of child pornography are constantly aware that their child sex abuse images will never disappear,” lawyers Carol Hepburn of Seattle and Katie Shipp of New York, who represent the women, wrote in the complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court in Erie.
Victims “will be repeatedly victimized by individuals like the defendant who endlessly participate in the market for child sex abuse images,” they said.
Nesset was on the Allegheny College faculty for two decades and was a renowned poet, critic, and writer of short stories. His collection “Paradise Road” won the 2007 Drue Heinz Literature Prize of the University of Pittsburgh. He resigned from the college after his arrest in 2014.