UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Appellee,

v.

ROBERT McCULLOCK,

Defendant, Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS

[Hon. William G. Young, U.S. District Judge]

Before

Lynch, Lipez, and Thompson, Circuit Judges.

Brendan Kelley, Assistant Federal Public Defender, for appellant. Donald C. Lockhart, Assistant United States Attorney, with whom Andrew E. Lelling, United States Attorney, was on brief, for appellee.

March 18, 2021 THOMPSON, Circuit Judge. We affirm the district judge's imposition of three special conditions of supervised release. The how, what, and why behind our decision follows.

How the Case Got Here1

Robert McCullock has spent much of his life on the wrong side of the law. And his rap sheet is quite disturbing, to say the least.

First there is his state conviction for two counts of child molestation: In separate incidents in 1999 and 2000, McCullock sexually abused five- and nine-year-old girls in Georgia. And the three-year-old brother of the five-year-old girl witnessed his sister's molestation. McCullock admitted both offenses, going so far as to reveal that he had tried to (but could not) put his penis in the five-year-old girl's vagina. He ended up with an eight-year prison sentence in 2002.

Then there is his federal conviction for using a computer to send child pornography: In 2001, while on bond during the pendency of the molestation case, McCullock participated in a child-porn file-sharing service. German police downloaded three child-porn images from his computer located in the United States (two of the images showed adult men raping girls as young as six).

1 The major background events are undisputed. - 2 - And Georgia police discovered hundreds of kiddie-porn images — and thousands of erased images — on a computer he had pawned. During his presentence interview in that case, he told authorities that he watched child pornography on his computer to lessen his desire to abuse children and that he "felt he had no cravings for children anymore at that point" when "he sold his computer" (these are not direct quotes from McCullock but rather probation's summary of what he said). After pleading guilty to using a computer to transport child porn, he got sentenced to ninety-two months in prison, to run consecutively with the state-prison term, and to three years of supervised release. His conditions of supervised release there included bans on committing any state or federal crime; possessing or viewing sexual materials depicting children or adults; having any contact with minors unless accompanied by an adult who is approved by probation and who knows of his child-sex- abuse history; and using or possessing a computer with internet access without probation's prior say-so.

And finally there is his state conviction for indecent assault and battery on a person over the age of fourteen: In 2017, while on supervised release for the child-porn offense, McCullock (according to a report by police in Massachusetts) tried to rape his then-girlfriend. During the violent encounter, he (according to her) said that "he was going to rape her" and that she had to

- 3 - "'suck[]' and 'fuck him'" — and then he "threw [her] pants across the room and threw [her] on the bed numerous times." Charged with "assault to rape," he later pled down to the just-mentioned indecent-assault-and-battery offense. This time he got two years in prison.