TSA Screener Found Not Guilty of Child-Sex Charges

Apr. 20--TAVARES -- A jury Wednesday acquitted an 18-year police veteran of child-sex charges that led to his firing from a job screening passengers at Orlando International Airport.

Warren F. Blum Jr., 54, clasped his hands as if praying and bowed to the jury of four men and two women who had deliberated about two hours before finding him not guilty.

His accuser, now 15, and her mother left the courtroom sobbing.

"I've spent a career defending the system that I believed in, and today it worked for me," said Blum, surrounded by a dozen former law-enforcement colleagues in civilian clothes.

Earlier Wednesday he testified that he did not have sex with the girl at his home in Groveland or anywhere else.

Blum vowed that he would fight to regain his job and his career.

He was fired last year from his job as a supervisor with the Transportation Security Administration at the Orlando airport after he was charged with sexual battery and lewd and lascivious conduct with a child under the age of 12.

He previously had worked as a police officer in Massachusetts and in the South Florida communities of Surfside and Boynton Beach.

The girl testified for about 45 minutes after the courtroom was cleared of spectators by Circuit Judge T. Michael Johnson. Prosecutors had asked the judge to close the courtroom during the girl's testimony. Johnson later said he wrongly excluded the media.

The Orlando Sentinel is not identifying the girl because of the nature of the case.

According to the closing statement of Assistant State Attorney Walter Forgie, the girl testified that Blum repeatedly had sexual contact with her, beginning when she was 10. She could not recall dates, times and other specific details of the alleged encounters.

Forgie excused her memory lapses. "These are not things a little girl wants to remember," he said.

But defense lawyer Robyn Hudson assailed the state's case, pointing out that the girl's mother did not contact Lake County deputy sheriffs because she doubted her daughter. The daughter had complained to her mother in November 2004.

Prosecutors based much of the case on the expert opinion of a nurse who had examined the girl and concluded she had gynecological injuries that were consistent with sexual abuse.

Defense lawyers countered with a medical expert who suggested the girl's injuries could have been incurred while playing sports or caused by forcefully inserting a tampon.

Prosecutors also introduced an apologetic e-mail that Blum had sent to the girl's mother. "I'm really upset with myself for letting this all go to (expletive)," it read. "I'm really so sorry, sorry you don't know it . . ."

Prosecutors and the girl's mother regarded it as a confession. Defense lawyers said Blum was sorry for the girl's lies.

Blum described it during his testimony as a "conciliatory-type letter."

"I was just upset," he said.

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