San Diego : 20-Year Sentence Given Leader of Prostitution Ring

A 67-year-old paraplegic who headed a teen-age prostitution ring was sentenced on Friday to 20 years in state prison.

Calvert John Mack, whose own attorney described him as “a classic case of a dirty old man,” received the term from San Diego Superior Court Judge J. Perry Langford.

Mack was originally charged with 86 criminal counts stemming from a child pornography investigation which began in December, 1983, after sheriff’s deputies searched his apartment on Magnolia Avenue in Santee and found hundreds of photographs of teen-age girls engaged in sex acts with men.

“Our family will never be the same. It’s completely broken up,” testified the mother of two Santee girls who were involved in the ring. “He’s done too much damage to allow back on the street to do anything to anyone else.”

Two girls told the judge that Mack lured them into performing sex acts and then frightened them out of telling their parents or the authorities.

“He talked me into believing what I did was OK. He threatened me many times, saying that he’d tell my mom, and that would scare me. Then he’d twist it around and say he was going to tell my mom what I was doing if I told the police,” one girl said.

“I feel it was so harmful . . . done totally without conscience, that he should go (to prison) for the rest of his life,” argued Deputy Dist. Atty. Jay Coulter, who urged a 25- to 30-year sentence.

“He was involved in ongoing, hard-core molestation of these girls for a substantial period of time. He was taking pictures. He got others involved, then he took pictures of them too,” said Coulter.

Mack is confined to a wheelchair because of a 1960 circus accident. He is in poor health and was hospitalized for many months while in custody. He is the last of eight defendants, aged 27 to 73, to be sentenced for involvement in the ring.

At the conclusion of the 90-minute sentencing, Langford said, “The damage is great, so the punishment must be great.”

Mack pleaded guilty on May 30 to 19 counts of oral copulation with a minor, lewd acts with minors and procuring a minor for prostitution. As a result, the other 67 charges were dismissed.

With one exception, all of the others in the ring received probation with a requirement of community service work and fines. Kenneth Jay Norton, now 70, of Santee, received 270 days in county jail. Norton was Mack’s neighbor in the 188-unit Woodglen Vista apartment complex.