CLEARFIELD, UT – Dan Phelps, former Mayor of Clearfield, UT, has some strong feelings about pornography.“It’s terrible, it’s a plague, it’s worse than a drug habit, worse than an alcohol habit,” Phelps told The Standard Examiner, an Ogden-based newspaper. “No one is immune to it.”
Phelps’ words sound no different than those uttered by any number of other politicians or government officials and certainly come as no surprise from a politician in Utah. What might come as a surprise, though, is the context in which he spoke them.
Phelps resigned as Mayor Clearfield in February, only a matter of weeks into his tenure as mayor, for what he vaguely described at the time as “personal reasons.” As it turns out, those “personal reasons” boiled down to using a city-owned computer to peruse online porn.
After receiving an anonymous tip regarding the true reason for Phelps’ sudden resignation in February, the Standard Examiner filed a government records request for any documentation from Phelps’ city-issued laptop computer “showing any inappropriate use for the purpose of viewing pornography.”
The city then supplied the newspaper with a disk containing 8,292 files downloaded between January 18th and February 11th of this year, “many of which included images and videos from pornographic websites,” according to the Standard Examiner.
In a recent interview, Phelps told the Standard Examiner that his “indiscretions” took place over a period of approximately two hours, spread across three days. According to Phelps, his surfing sessions broke down to 15 minutes the first day, 20 the next and about 90 minutes the final time he surfed porn from his city laptop.
Phelps claims that the problem started when a pop-up console “appeared” on his city laptop out of the blue. Phelps contends that the pop-up only appeared because the city’s
Internet filters “were down that week.”
“If the filters had been in place, this wouldn’t have happened,” complained Phelps, adding “I’m not justifying what happened.”
According to the Standard Examiner, an analysis conducted by the newspaper’s IT Department found no evidence of a virus, spyware, or other malfunction that would have resulted in files being automatically downloaded to the computer.
The information on the disk supplied by the city shows that the sites Phelps visited included “names with sexual references like ‘sluttyschoolgirls,’ ‘coedscash’ and ‘castingcouch,’” according to the Standard Examiner.
Phelps claims that he brought his inappropriate surfing to the attention of other officials voluntarily, detailing his actions to the city’s Information Systems Manager, the acting City Manager and the City Attorney.
There were more confessions and discussions of the situation over a period of about 10 days before his resignation, according to Phelps, who says he is surprised by how it all worked out, saying that he would think that “someone who came forward and admitted they made a mistake” wouldn’t be punished so severely.
Phelps also said he was unaware of the city’s policy regarding the use of city computers, and said he doesn’t remember signing any kind of form or contract acknowledging a policy about such computer use, and said the city needs to be clearer about its policy on computer use by elected officials.
In addition to resigning as Mayor, Phelps has also resigned as an instructor for the Church of Latter Day Saints where he had been teaching for approximately 10 years. Phelps told the Standard Examiner that, after viewing the porn sites, he knew he couldn’t teach youth about the “evils of pornography” any longer.
“Two hours on the Internet has cost me my job, my calling, and serving as mayor in a community I love,” said Phelps. “I had everything going for me. It’s amazing what two hours of choices can do to you.”
