Woman Worked in San Clemente, Laguna Niguel Offices : DMV Official Arrested in Obscene Film Case

ESCONDIDO — Sheriff’s detectives have arrested a woman who worked as office manager of the Department of Motor Vehicles in San Clemente and her husband on suspicion of using their home to produce obscene films for swapping with a nationwide network of amateur pornographers.

Jean Walton, 37, and her husband Kenneth, 44, of Escondido were booked and released without bail from the County Jail at Vista last weekon suspicion of possessing obscene materials with the intent to distribute them, a misdemeanor.

The arrest followed a raid by San Diego sheriff’s vice detectives on the couple’s home. Officers seized about 30 homemade videotapes, including tapes depicting bestiality and sadomasochism, Detective Robert Hoxter said Friday.

“I don’t routinely come across this type of pornography during our investigations,” Hoxter said. “I don’t know anyone personally that admits to being involved in this sort of thing.”

Jean Walton, a 14-year DMV employee, has been on assignment for the last several weeks setting up the department’s new office in Laguna Niguel, according to George Farnham, a DMV spokesman in Sacramento. Previously, she was the manager of the department’s office in San Clemente, Farnham said.

DMV May Investigate

As of Friday, no steps had been taken to discipline her in connection with the arrest, but Farnham said it was possible that the DMV would investigate her activities.

The Waltons could not be reached for comment.

Hoxter said the tapes seized from the couple were unusually graphic. But he said it was becoming increasingly commonplace for non-professionals to film and distribute pornographic movies.

“I would call it a cottage industry,” Hoxter said. “If what I see in the underground newspapers and on the underground computer networks that I’m aware of is true, then there is literally a subculture of people engaged in this.”

Easy access to new film-making technology has spurred production of pornographic films, he added.

“Anyone that owns one of the VCR cameras and the corresponding recording equipment can become a producer of any kind of movie,” Hoxter said, “whether of their child in the bathtub or the production of material that can be considered obscene.”

Detectives suspect that the Waltons were swapping tapes through a nationwide network of film makers rather than selling the videos, some of which appeared to be filmed at their home, Hoxter said.

Other suspected producers of obscene films also are under investigation, he said.