WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- The mother of former U.S. Senate Republican aide Jesse Ryan Loskarn has posted online a two-page letter written by her son, who committed suicide this month.
Loskarn, once the respected chief of staff for Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, was fired by the senator in mid-December, days after U.S. Postal Service investigators raided his Capitol Hill home and found child pornography on DVDs sent by mail and online streaming. Most of the material featured young nude boys.
After his arrest, Loskarn spent five days on suicide watch and was allowed to go home only after telling a federal judge he would not try to kill himself, Politico said.
The letter, dated Jan. 23, indicates the disgraced 35-year-old had been sexually abused as a child, and apparently intended to take his own life immediately after his arrest.
Related
- Former aide facing child porn charges committed suicide
- Loskarn indictment delayed; motion hints of possible plea deal
- Loskarn let out of jail pending grand jury case
- Alexander chief of staff handcuffed, suspended in child porn probe
- Top aide to U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander arraigned on child porn charges
Calling it his "deepest and darkest secret," Loskarn described stumbling across child pornography while searching the Internet for music on a peer-to-peer network, but said he didn't turn away because "I found myself drawn to videos that matched my own childhood abuse."
He said he had dealt with his abuse on his own and never sought counseling or treatment.
"The news coverage of my spectacular fall makes it impossible for me to crawl in a hole and disappear," he wrote in the typewritten letter. "I've hurt every single human being I've ever known and the details of my shame are preserved on the Internet for all time. There is no escape."
Loskarn, a 2000 graduate of Tulane University, hanged himself Jan. 23 in the basement of his parents Maryland home as he awaited an indictment from a grand jury in the child pornography case. He was scheduled to appear in federal court Feb. 10.
In her post Monday night his mother, Gay Loskarn, noted the "media frenzy" generated by her son's arrest and said she released his letter because he could be heard only in death.
"Newspaper and other media outlets depicted him mostly in a negative light and stole away any good he had done during his short but full life," she wrote.
"This letter written by Jesse Ryan Loskarn was found after he took his own life on January 23, 2014. If his words can help just one person who is suffering in silence, it will be his greatest accomplishment."
