Singer Slapped With YouTube Child Porno Case Wants to Go to Jail

A sexually explicit ditty spliced into footage of a children's concert then broadcast over YouTube will be sending an aspiring singing star to jail.

Evan Emory, 21, who promotes his club performances in the small community of Ravenna, Mich., online, inadvertently gained international fame when his prank caught the attention of police and then the media. A firestorm of controversy ensued when a prosecutor charged him with child pornography, so now Emory says he wants to go to jail to make the whole thing go away.

"He hopes that by sitting in jail he makes amends," Emory's attorney, Terry J. Nolan, told the Muskegon Chronicle today. "As a lawyer, I don't know if he deserves jail, but Evan wants to do the jail because he feels like he deceived the school. He loves Ravenna. He knows he deceived not only the parents of the kids, but he deceived the school."

A deal is in the works between Emory and prosecutors that would downgrade his child sex crime case to a felony count of posting harmful information on the Internet if he pleads guilty, Muskegon County Sheriff Dean Roesler told AOL News. Originally Emory faced a maximum 20-year prison sentence with a lifetime registration as a sex offender. The deal would involve jail time, five years' probation and community service, but no registration as a sex offender.

"We take the exploitation of children very seriously," Roesler said. "I was very disturbed when I saw it. The children were unknowingly exploited for the benefit of this Evan Emory. So was the school system and the whole community of Ravenna. It's a very close-knit community."

The incident began on Feb. 12 when Emory filmed himself performing several songs for a class of first-graders at Beechnau Elementary School. He later spliced in something else entirely -– another song with sexually explicit gestures and lyrics such as "I'll be the bus riding your ass up and down my town" and "See how long it takes to make your panties mine." The faces of the children were clearly visible in the video.

"He wanted to be a performer, he wanted to be a YouTube star. He wanted to be discovered on YouTube like Justin Bieber," Roesler said. "Well, he definitely got noticed."

Emory told school officials he was using the footage as part of a portfolio to compete for admission to a Big 10 college. The video was definitely well thought out.

Emory brought a videographer with him and gave instructions to get shots of the children looking surprised and then angry. When the children left, Emory asked the teacher if he could stay behind for additional filming, and that's when the second song was recorded, Ravenna School District Superintendent John VanLoon told AOL News.

The children's faces were spliced into the song, appearing to give various reactions to the lyrics, VanLoon said.

The video shocked teachers, parents and the community where Emory attended school himself.

"I probably had half a dozen contact me and say are we talking about the same kid, are you sure? We couldn't believe he would do something like this," VanLoon said.

Emory was arrested at home that same day and the Sheriff's Department notified YouTube, which took the video down.

"He didn't want to take it down. He wanted to see how may hits it was going to get," Roesler said.

For his part, Emory has apologized in a Muskegon Chronicle story, saying he never meant to hurt anyone.

"I feel horrible that it was interpreted that way," he said, wiping away tears.

Emory said he wrote the song when he was 16 and had feedback from his friends that it was funny. So he decided to push the envelope and shoot footage at an "inappropriate" place, he said.

However, the ensuing firestorm led to suspension from his waiter job at Applebee's and legal fees that have forced his father to look for work out of state, The New York Times reported.

"I s**t on my community," Emory told the Chronicle. "I have people who have known me since I was 4 in my community that want me dead. I sang at my graduation commencement. You can literally fit the entire town in the gymnasium. I never wanted this to happen. I'm sorry to everybody."