A psychosexual evaluation has delayed the sentencing of the Charlottesville socialite facing more than a decade in federal prison on a child pornography charge.
According to an expert, the privately obtained report could sway a judge to suspend some time from the prison sentence of Eleanor Hunton Hoppe, the ex-wife of a federal judge and the scion of one of Virginia’s leading legal families, who has been accused of preying on children as young as 8 years old.
"Her counsel must have determined that it was favorable, and he wants it in the record," retired Charlottesville forensic psychologist Jeffrey Fracher told The Daily Progress. "If it’s not favorable, it’s considered attorney work product, and it would have gotten buried."
The judge presiding over Hoppe’s case has agreed to receive the report. Fracher said that unless the judge discards the plea agreement, he can’t sentence the 46-year-old Hoppe to more than a stipulated 135 months.
"He could shave off some months," Fracher said.
Left unstated in the court papers is how Hoppe, who has already been declared indigent, funded the report.
"A relative could have paid for it," Fracher said. "These things are expensive."
Until 2021, Hoppe was married to Judge Joel Hoppe, a Charlottesville-based federal magistrate. Before that, she was a Hunton, hailing from the family that founded Richmond’s largest law firm: Hunton Andrews Kurth.
Eleanor Hoppe has been getting no-cost legal services from the federal public defender’s office in Washington, D.C., where her case is being heard.
In August, shortly before her slated sentencing, she filed a motion for a delay.
"The defense needs additional time to prepare for sentencing," her lawyer, Ubong Akpan, an assistant federal public defender, wrote in the motion which went unopposed and allowed time for the preparation of the psychosexual report.
Judge Rudolph Contreras ordered the report to be shared with the prosecutor and incorporated into the presentencing report that he commissioned in September from the probation office. Now, it’s up to the prosecution and defense to confer before a sentencing hearing in the new year.
"The parties shall meet, confer, and submit a proposed sentencing schedule no later than December 18," Contreras wrote on Dec. 4.
The judge’s latest order comes more than seven months after Eleanor Hoppe pleaded guilty to distributing child pornography and agreeing to the 135-month penalty. The plea resolved a case that originally contained three charges, including one count of enticing a child.
The charges that have put Eleanor Hoppe behind bars stem from her contact with an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a perverted father seeking her assistance to sexually abuse his 8-year-old daughter. After carrying on an explicit conversation, in which Eleanor Hoppe allegedly promised to exploit the child, she was arrested at a Warrenton motel on March 16 of last year bearing a pink “big girl robe” and a children’s tote bag containing lubricant. She has maintained she was trying to stop the father from abusing the child.
During her 20-month pretrial incarceration, the Charlottesville socialite, herself a former paralegal, was accused of using her father’s and brother’s status as lawyers to circumvent jailhouse phone regulations.
Since her plea in April, her brother has been disbarred for a year. His disbarment, however, was not the result of Eleanor Hoppe’s game of telephone.
In January, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia claimed that the Hunton men, both then in good standing with the state bar, "attempted to evade jail rules" by acceding to Eleanor Hoppe’s scheme to evade the routine recording of inmate calls.
While U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves blasted the alleged scheme in a filing, no public disciplinary actions ensued. What the disciplinary records of the Virginia State Bar show is that in June Hoppe’s brother, Eppa Hunton VI, received a one-year license suspension for various violations of the Virginia Rules of Professional Conduct, including dishonesty and failures in competence and communication.
In one instance, the Hunton falsely informed an adoption client that he had filed some petitions with a court.
Hunton reportedly told a bar investigator that "he focused his attention on ‘billable’ vs. ‘flat fee’ work" and that he "intended to get to" that client’s case.
Hunton eventually took a multi-month leave from his employment at the Harrisonburg law firm of Cravens & Noll to deal with his substance abuse and addiction issues, according to the June 27 disciplinary report.
As for his sister, she has repeatedly sought pretrial release and complained to the judge that the medical care she receives inside the Correctional Treatment Facility, a privately run jail overseen by the District of Columbia Department of Corrections, is inadequate. She will have served nearly two years by the the time of her sentencing — if it occurs in early 2025.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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