Pennsylvania Attorney General: Porn Email Had Kids

Some of the pornographic emails that were exchanged among state government officials in a scandal that has claimed some of their jobs involved children and violent sexual acts against women, the state attorney general said Tuesday.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane said in an interview televised Tuesday night on CNN the images are "deplorable."

"When I saw them they literally took my breath away," Kane said. "And they are deplorable: hardcore, graphic, sometimes violent emails that had a string of videos and pictures depicting sometimes children, old women. Some of them involved violent sexual acts against women."

Kane, a Democrat, said she is being stopped from investigating them by a court order.

Kane didn't describe the material involving children and violent sexual acts against women or say who exchanged it.

One of Kane's lawyers in the case, Lanny Davis, says he hasn't seen all of the emails involved and isn't sure to what Kane was referring. He says two images he saw of children were inappropriate but not necessarily child pornography.

Last week, Kane said four of her employees had been fired and 11 suspended without pay for involvement in the pornographic email scandal, which also has prompted a state Supreme Court justice to step down.

The hundreds of emails that Kane has released included pornographic or explicit photos, videos and jokes. Kane's office plans training, starting in December, for all employees and will set up a way for staff to report such behavior without facing retaliation.

Kane previously had said the emails surfaced during an examination of how state prosecutors handled the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse case, a review she promised while running for the office in 2012.

She also had disclosed the participation of several former employees of the office, leading at least four to leave government jobs elsewhere, including the state's environmental protection secretary, a lawyer in that agency, a member of the state parole board and a county prosecutor.

Last month, Justice Seamus McCaffery retired after his fellow justices suspended him amid the disclosure he had he sent or received 234 of the emails. McCaffery sent most of the emails to a now-retired agent in the attorney general's office, who then forwarded the emails to others in the office, Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille has said.

Kane, a former Lackawanna County prosecutor, is the first Democrat and first woman elected attorney general in Pennsylvania. She took over from Linda Kelly, one of two Republicans to serve on an interim basis after Republican Tom Corbett stepped down to become governor in 2011.

Corbett has said he was not aware of the emails while heading the state prosecutor's office.