(
)
Democratic City Councilman Robert Jackson is known for his children’s-health-campaign visits to the Dominican Republic — much less celebrated is the fact that one of his travel companions is an admitted procurer of kiddie porn.
Jackson — who represents Washington Heights and is running for borough president — has visited the DR several times with Stephen Null, director of the nonprofit Friends of Lead Free Children.
Null, 66, pleaded guilty to “attempted possession of a sexual performance by a child,” according to an April 25, 2002, plea agreement.
“I’m aware of it. I became aware of it just a couple of years ago,” Jackson said. “He said he made a mistake. I don’t know the details. It was resolved from a legal point of view — that’s what he communicated.”
Last March, Jackson skipped a borough president’s forum so he could travel to the Dominican Republic to promote children’s health with Null and his nonprofit. He’s known Null for at least 11 years and said he’s proud of his work with Null’s nonprofit.
“I have nothing to hide,” he said. “My work in the Dominican Republic speaks for itself.”
Null’s guilty plea, which led to six years’ probation and being listed as a Level 1 registered sex offender, came a month after he admitted to ordering child pornography over the Internet, court records show.
At the time, he told a court psychiatrist that “he was forced” to trawl the Internet to exchange porn because of the “increasingly restrictive policies of the Giuliani administration.”
“Pre-Teen Trio,” “Kid Combo,” “Bi-Girls” and “Young Blood Real” were among the sick kid vids he ordered using a $140 money order and the alias Steve Hull, documents revealed.
Null dismissed the incident as “much worse sounding than it is,” but would not deny he ordered the movies.
“My attorney saw one video, only one was opened,” Null said. “It was not child porn, but teenagers having a slumber party, and contained no nudity.”
Null also contended that he is retired, though the nonprofit’s Web site lists him as its director. He also denied that the nonprofit’s focus was working with kids.
“As you can see from the Web site, our focus is pregnant women,” he said in an e-mail to The Post. “It’s pregnant women, not children.”
Friends of Lead Free Children had an annual budget of $170,862 in 2011; received $111,950 in gifts, grants and contributions; and paid Null at least $45,600 for serving as its vice president and treasurer, according to its most recently available tax records. Its sponsors include the Port Authority, MetroPlus Health Plan and Con Ed.
The 2011 tax return also shows that the nonprofit approved a $40,000 loan to Null, which was in default as of that filing. Friends of Lead Free Children is still based in the same building where law-enforcement officials found Null’s cache of kiddie porn.
Jackson, who has served as a Washington Heights councilman since 2002 and will be term-limited out this year, has had a relationship with Null since at least 2005 when they traveled to Santo Domingo to distribute 6 million prenatal vitamins to needy mothers.
Since then, the two have trekked together to the island nation on several occasions.
In 2007, Jackson and Null brought food and school supplies to Haina, a Dominican village with high levels of lead in the soil. The following year, they traveled to Haina and Barahona to assist poor people in need of medical treatment. And in March 2009, Jackson gave a lecture at the University of Autónoma De Santo Domingo — on a trip that Null also took.
Jackson, who has also accepted at least three campaign contributions from Null totalling $175, is chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee.