Damon Rallis sentenced to 7 years for possession of child sex abuse materials

Damon Rallis, a longtime Southold Town building department employee and one-time candidate for Town Supervisor, was sentenced to seven years in prison for possession of child sex abuse materials in federal district court in Islip Wednesday morning.

Mr. Rallis pleaded guilty to the federal charges in April 2023 and was initially scheduled to be sentenced in October 2023, but his sentencing date had been delayed multiple times within the past two years.

In addition to the seven-year prison sentence, Mr. Rallis will be under supervised release for five years with special conditions and pay a $100 mandatory special assessment fee. He will also be required to register as a sex offender, as previously reported.

Mr. Rallis will surrender to Otisville Correctional Facility in Orange County, N.Y., and begin serving his sentence Sept. 15. His defense attorney, Jason Russo, asked the court allow Mr. Rallis to surrender himself in six months so he could attend his son’s graduation and spend time with his family. Mr. Rallis, who has undergone more than 48 months of court-ordered supervision and house arrest, was granted a modified curfew allowing him to leave his residence between the hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

“It’s a very serious crime; my client was facing decades of incarceration, and Judge Azrack carefully considered the many, many submissions that we put in and gave what I believe is a is a very fair treatment to my client,” Mr. Russo said following the sentencing. “As he said in his statement to the judge, [Mr. Rallis is] going to do his time, do what he needs to do, continue on the positive path he’s been on for four years.”

Family and friends gathered behind Mr. Rallis inside the courtroom, many of whom submitted letters of support for him, including his wife and son. Mr. Rallis made a statement in court acknowledging his crimes and expressed remorse for his actions. He spoke about how his decisions caused “profound harm” to his loved ones, as well as a loss of his career and respect from the community who trusted him. He added that his pre-trial custody allowed him to face his childhood trauma, go through a 12-step program for his “compulsive behaviors” and rehabilitate his relationships with his wife and son.

“I sit before you a changed man,” Mr. Rallis said before Judge Azrack.

In a memorandum filed March 7, his attorney, Jason Russo requested the judge sentence Mr. Rallis to the mandatory minimum of five years in prison and impose no fine or financial penalty, due to Mr. Rallis’ inability to pay the fine. The prosecution recommended an 8-year imprisonment in their sentencing memorandum, filed on April 4.

According to court documents, Mr. Rallis, who previously served as vice chairman of Southold Town’s Democratic Committee, became the subject of a federal investigation after he reportedly shared a pair of sexually explicit videos of toddlers with an undercover FBI agent. The images were distributed via an “invite-only” group chat on the social media platform Kik in 2020 under the online alias “dirtydaddy431.”

Investigators executed a search warrant and raided Mr. Rallis’ Southold home in February 2021. At an arraignment hearing later that year, assistant U.S. attorney Paul Scotti said agents discovered a hidden camera that was angled to capture images of visitors using the bathroom in his home.

During the raid, Mr. Rallis, who had been a Boy Scout master in Greenport, admitted to law enforcement that he had viewed and posted child sex abuse materials and that he would delete images after viewing them, according to a sworn affidavit from an FBI special agent.

Following his guilty plea in April 2023, Mr. Rallis was released on a $200,000 bond and placed on house arrest, though an application was granted to allow Mr. Rallis to leave his residence between the hours of 9 a.m. and 3 p.m.

In the defense’s sentencing memorandum, Mr. Russo urged the judge to consider other non-statutory mitigating factors, such as Mr. Rallis’ acceptance of responsibility and cooperation with authorities, his unlikeness to reoffend or commit further crimes, his likely affirmative response to future supervision and the hardship incarceration would have on his family.

Mr. Russo raised statutory factors for the court to consider as well, including Mr. Rallis’ family history, personal experiences with sexual abuse, struggles with substance abuse, mental health issues and his loss of employment following his arrest.

Prosecutor Scotti discussed additional evidence in court that the prosecution felt warranted an eight year sentence, including an “Iowa Case” local FBI agents were contacted about regarding an unrelated investigation into the sexual exploitation of children in their district. The April 4 sentencing memorandum submitted by the prosecution noted evidence obtained from the cellphone of a defendant in the Iowa Case that revealed a series of chats between Mr. Rallis and the Iowa defendant, where the two “routinely discussed their shared sexual attraction to minor children,” as young as 4 to 7 years old.

They would also “groom young girls” and send images to one another of minors they were interested in, according to the document. Before her decision, Judge Azrack expressed feeling disturbed by the notion that Mr. Rallis assured this online chat friend that his victims would not recall anything, “because the memories don’t really develop until 9 or 10.”

The prosecutor also described Mr. Rallis’ involvement in the Boy Scouts as “every parent’s nightmare.”Mr. Scotti said the ongoing production of child pornography needs to be addressed in cases like this, and Judge Azrack agreed that, although Mr. Rallis has taken steps to better his behavior and is “fortunate” to have the support of his family, the court “must send a strong message.”

“[There is] no question that it is extremely serious,” Judge Azrack said.

This story has been updated.