CONWAY — Former University of Central Arkansas President Allen Meadors viewed so much online pornography that he used up almost $1,000 in UCA-paid data plans during a single week abroad, a technology employee told police.
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Brent Passmore, director of Web development at UCA, told the Arkansas State Police that Meadors had one or two iPads owned by the public university. Documents later refer to only a single iPad.
Whenever Meadors was preparing to travel outside the country, Passmore would set an international data plan for him, Passmore told police.
Meadors, 65, pleaded guilty Jan. 15 to a misdemeanor violation of the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act as a result of events relating to a food vendor’s contract in the weeks before he resigned Sept. 2, 2011.
After the case was closed, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette obtained access under the open-records law to transcripts of investigative interviews with Passmore, Meadors and others.
The investigation focused on the failure of Meadors and former UCA board Chairman Scott Roussel to disclose that food-vendor Aramark’s $700,000 offer to renovate the UCA-owned president’s home was contingent on a seven-year contract extension.
During the interviews, state police also learned about the pornography and gathered evidence, including pictures of nude women and sexual encounters involving men and women.
“We are going to use this evidence you might recover” from Meadors’ electronic items as “leverage to get the suspect ... to take a guilty plea,” Rick Newton, a senior special agent with the state police, wrote to the agency’s computer forensic laboratory in a Jan. 11, 2012, memorandum.
Meadors did not return a phone message left at his North Carolina home or an e-mail seeking comment. His Little Rock attorney, Timothy Dudley, also did not return a phone message.
UCA spokesman Fredricka Sharkey said in an e-mail Friday that the school’s finance and administration division “reports no awareness of requests for reimbursement [by Meadors] for data plan usage.”
According to a transcription obtained from the prosecuting attorney’s office, Passmore told Newton that he learned of the pornography when he was trying to find out why Meadors was spending so much on international data plans.
Meadors’ travels while president included three trips to China and at least one to Mexico.
An AT&T data plan allocating 200 megabytes for one month cost $199 at thattime, Passmore said during a March 6, 2012, interview with Newton and Pam Massey, director of UCA’s Office of Internal Audit.
“And during one of the trips, he [Meadors] had used - he was gone for a week and had used four or five data plans,” Passmore said. “And when you’re traveling, I mean, if AT&T thinks you’re going to use 200 megs a month and you use five of those in a week, the question became, okay, what’s happening, what’s he doing, what’s he, you know, viewing, if you will.”
Passmore said e-mail and “regular surfing of the web” would not consume that many megabytes.
“Out of curiosity,” Passmore decided to check the iPad’s browsing history. There, he said, he found “several sites listed and we pulled probably two to four, one from - or several from a website called Mr. Skin, which if you will check, it’s for celebrity photos and videos and then - ”
“Nude?” Newton asked.
“Yes. Nude,” Passmore replied.
Passmore said the iPad’s browsing history also reflected links to other websites about blondes.
“He was into blondes. ... Seventies style blonde females.”
Passmore said he then understood why Meadors had used so much data.
But later, when Meadors took other international trips and needed data plans, “the history was - was always cleared. And it’s a - something - you have to know to do,” Passmore said.
In a March 9, 2012, interview, Meadors acknowledged viewing some pornography on a computer at his UCA owned home after Newton said investigators had found that Meadors had used Google to “search for male techniques of masturbation.”
Meadors, referring to his wife, who had left Conway for several months during his presidency, said, “Okay. Like I say, I mean, I guess - Barbara’s gone, I tell you, I’m not going to - I’m not going to deny it.”
“Probably once or twice a week, I look at some porn,” Meadors added.
Meadors was questioned at a fire station in North Carolina, where he now lives, after Newton said he had to stake out Meadors’ house to get the interview.
When Massey asked him if he viewed porn only on the home computer, Meadors said, “That’s the one I remember.” He later said, “I don’t know if I’ve had - if I pulled some up at work one night.”
Meadors then explained that a student at the university where he previously worked “became a porn star and I occasionally checked on her.”
The brunette student, whose stage name is Carmen Hart, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Meadors said.
Meadors said he did not know if he ever used iPads to check on Hart.
“Did you ever ... look at that when you were overseas and it [would] cost a large amount of money?” Massey asked Meadors.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, never,” Meadors replied.
Massey asked him why he kept fee cards “to buy more and buy more and buy more megabytes?”
“It’d just run out,” Meadors replied.
Meadors said he answered all of his e-mails daily while out of the country. “And that eats up the time. I did very little surfing,” he added.
Later, Meadors, asked if he had looked at pornography on his iPad during such travels and if that’s what cost so much money, said he was sure he had not.
“I’m positive it didn’t. You can check that out.”
Meadors said he “didn’t buy anything or download anything” and that UCA did not get charged “one penny” because of any of his pornography viewing.
He again insisted that he “was not doing any porn over there,” referring to other countries.
About that time, Meadors apparently got a phone call and was heard saying in part, “I’m down the street, honey, I’ll get home in 15 minutes. ... I know, but it’s true this time. ... I’m down the street and I’m going to the post office and I’ll be home. Bye. God love ’em.”
He later said to the investigators, “This is going to be hard on them” - apparently a reference to family members.
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