Ex-Subway pitchman sentenced to over 15 years on child sex charges

Jared Fogle, the former Subway pitchman, was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison on federal charges related to child pornography and having sex with minors.

Fogle, 38, was sentenced Thursday in US District Court in Indianapolis, Indiana, The Associated Press reported. He will serve a minimum of 13 years before being eligible for parole and faces a lifetime of supervised release, according to TheIndyChannel.com, a local ABC affiliate.

He also agreed to pay $1.4 million in restitution to his victims.

Fogle, who is Jewish, pleaded guilty in August to one count each of traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and distribution and receipt of child pornography. He admitted to paying for sex with teenage girls and receiving child pornography.

At the four-hour sentencing hearing before Judge Tanya Walton Pratt, according to several reports, a forensic psychiatrist testifying for the defense attributed Fogle’s behavior to his dramatic weight loss that led to his career as Subway’s spokesman.

“Once he lost weight, it seemed as though in a short time he had hypersexuality,” psychiatrist John Bradford said. “There are brain disorders that are associated with sexual drive.”

Fogle rose to fame as a student at Indiana University when he lost 245 pounds, reportedly by sticking to a diet of low-fat Subway sandwiches. In 2004, he founded the Jared Foundation to combat childhood obesity.

After police raided Fogle’s home in July, Subway, which had paid Fogle for 15 years to be a spokesman, announced it had cut off ties with him.

Fogle has been married for five years and has two children under the age of 10, according to NPR. Prosecutors said investigators had determined that Fogle did not abuse his own children.

In a statement delivered at his sentencing hearing, Fogle said he became “dependent upon alcohol, pornography and prostitutes,” and that while committing his crimes he did not “think through what I was doing” or “think about the consequences of my actions.”

“I’ve learned so much about the underage minors with whom I’ve paid to have sex with,” he added. “Not a day will go by that I don’t think about them, what I did and the impact on their lives.”

Fogle said he takes “full, ample responsibility for what I’ve done” and wants “to become a good decent person and a good father, and to help others.”