A judge sanctioned Daren Bieniek for committing multiple probation violations and sentenced him to 60 days in jail Monday.
The state requested Chief Judge Cindy Scott revoke Bieniek’s probation after a surprise home inspection by a probation officer in September found Bieniek was viewing porn, sent pictures of his victim to another person, had videos on his phone of him masturbating and he deleted digital records.
Bieniek, 51, pleaded guilty to distribution and exhibiting material showing minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and third-degree sexual assault in November 2017. He was caught in bed with a 16-year-old girl in March 2016.
According to the West Virginia State Police sex offender registry, he spent approximately a year in prison for third-degree sexual assault. Bieniek was sentenced to five years of probation for the distribution charge and is on 25 years of extended supervision.
“I find some of your testimony to be quite unbelievable,” Scott told Bieniek.
She expressed concern about his need to justify his violations and said he had only himself to blame — not other people.
In Monday’s testimony, Bieniek admitted to all the violations the state accused him of, except for saying that he didn’t visit a few of the named porn sites. He said the videos were sent to him by a woman he was seeing — not something he sought out.
Bieniek said the pictures of his victim were sent after talking to someone who thought he might have known her. Probation officer Rick Waddell said he ordered Bieniek to delete all pictures of his victim. Bieniek said he did and one of the pictures was from a Snapchat memory he wasn’t aware of and the other two were “publicly available.”
He said the videos of him were her “fantasy” and he was voicing them for her.
“As Mr. Wadell has described, a significant issue is that he was engaging in a fantasy that played out a set of circumstances that at least in part lead to the underlying felony,” Assistant prosecutor Jennifer Stephens said.
That fantasy involved a classroom and at the time of his arrest Bieniek was a parent volunteer speech and drama coach at Morgantown High School.
Scott encouraged Bieniek to seek additional help when he gets out of jail.
As part of his probation, he takes part in group counseling weekly, though he missed four appointments, which Waddell said he needs. Bieniek also said he was seeking a therapist on his own over Zoom but stopped after his phone and laptop were taken when the violations were found.
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