OPETH Frontman Comments On Former Bus Driver's Guilty Plea To Child-Porn Charge

OPETH mainman Mikael Åkerfeldt has spoken to the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet about the sentencing of the band's former tour bus driver to 25 years in prison on a guilty plea to a child porn charge.

Leon Rodney Whitman Jr. (photo, charge report) was arrested in Tampa last November 13 while the band was in town for a performance.

The 47-year-old had been driving OPETH for five or six weeks when the traumatic drama unfolded. Mikael and fellow OPETH guitarist Peter Lindgren bumped into the driver in a hotel elevator.

"He had a girl with him that he introduced as his niece," Mikael told Aftonbladet. "What crossed my mind mostly was that she seemed kind of weird, almost high."

But the 16-year-old girl wasn't the bus driver's niece. She was the victim of a sexual predator.

When OPETH returned to their bus after the concert, the driver was not there.

"He had been arrested, we were told," Mikael recalled. "Later it appeared that he had been in his hotel room with the girl. One can only guess what he had done."

According to published reports, the 47-year-old had sex with the 16-year-old and filmed it. Police said the girl told them Whitman had flown her to Tampa from Michigan, and had taken pictures of her to "build a portfolio for her to become a model."

Prosecutors said Whitman admitted he had engaged in sexual acts with the girl in Michigan and Tampa, and admitted making the videos.

The FBI obtained a search warrant and seized the driver's laptop from the tour bus. It was full of child pornography.

"You get pissed off. Disgusted," Mikael told Aftonbladet. "We certainly don't wanna be involved in any kind of criminal activity — least of all something like that. But we have nothing to do with the choice of bus drivers [on our tours]. I didn't talk to him that much, but he seemed OK. After all, you have to assume that people are honest."

Whitman pleaded guilty to production of child pornography on April 6. He was already in the county jail on three counts of computer pornography and one count each of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and interfering with custody.

Police said Whitman's camera contained more than 200 lewd pictures of several females, some of them authorities believed were underage.

"Of course I'm happy that he got caught after all," Mikael told Aftonbladet. "Considering how much he's been traveling around in his line of work, he's probably been able to do a lot of harm."