This article has been updated since it first appeared online.
John “Johnny” Robert Maher, best known for his ownership of the now-shuttered restaurant The Rogue Gentlemen — later rebranded as Rogue — pleaded guilty to a child pornography charge at the end of October.
John Maher in 2017 (File photo by Piet E. Jones)
According to court documents filed by Jessica D. Aber, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Richmond Police Department learned that an email and IP address connected to Maher, 40, uploaded several explicit images to a Dropbox account in December 2018. When a search warrant was executed on Maher’s Richmond home on April 17, 2019, authorities seized, among other devices, a MacBook Air laptop. It was discovered that Maher used the laptop on April 7, 2019, to watch a 23-minute video featuring a “male minor approximately 13 to 15 years old" that “constitutes child pornography,” according to the court documents. On Oct. 27, Maher pleaded guilty to a single count of receipt of child pornography.
The news has shaken the Richmond restaurant community, with members of the local dining scene expressing their outrage and dismay via social media. Considered a knowledgable source in the dining and beverage realm, Maher has contributed drink recipes in the past for Richmond magazine and until last month was contributing food and beverage articles for online publication The Manual.
Open from 2014 to the end of 2018, Rogue was located in Jackson Ward and received acclaim for its cocktail-focused beverage program. The chef and restaurateur was also behind the short-lived Japanese restaurant Yaki, opened in 2017 and located at 506 W. Broad St.
Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney officiated Maher’s 2017 marriage to baker Drew Thomasson as his first official act; the gesture also was meant to highlight Stoney’s support of same-sex marriage. According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Maher’s Rogue Restaurant Group made an in-kind donation to Stoney’s mayoral campaign in 2016 for event catering valued at $1,090. “After hearing about these serious charges for the first time, the mayor was shocked and deeply disturbed,” Stoney spokesman Jim Nolan said in a statement. “In his opinion, the justice system worked.”
Between 2019 and 2020, Maher worked behind the bar of French restaurant Grisette in Church Hill. Chef and co-owner Donnie Glass says that the restaurant was completely unaware of the accusations against Maher.
“We had absolutely no knowledge of any part of this during the employment of John Maher, which ended 14+ months ago,” Glass said in a statement via email to Richmond magazine. “I saw the court documents for the first time this morning and was sickened and shocked by what I read. Grisette as a business (and myself as a person, particularly as the father of two young boys) was not and would never be complicit with harboring information about this situation in any way.”
A Reddit thread posted Tuesday on r/rvadine from the account “exposechefjohnny” included an image of Maher’s plea agreement.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case but says sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 17, 2023. Maher faces at least five years and up to 20 years in prison, as well as fines of up to $250,000. He is currently being held without bond at Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw.
Update, Feb. 27, 2023: Maher was sentenced this month to nine years in prison after pleading guilty to receiving child pornography.
In a letter to Judge Henry E. Hudson, Maher tried to explain how the files — 5,643 images and 681 videos — ended up in his Dropbox account. He claimed that clicking hashtags on Instagram "turned into a classic ‘down the rabbit hole’ ” that led him to “nondescript Dropbox links full of random letters and numbers.”
While the defendant’s sentencing memorandum notes that Maher had in fact “used a computer to download images and videos of child pornography over a 10-month period … [and] sent several child pornography files by email to another [adult] individual in exchange for adult images,” it also argues “that this conviction is truly an aberration in a life otherwise devoted to family and to helping others.”
The 108-month sentence is four years longer than the minimum sentence of five years, and a restitution hearing is scheduled for April 6. As part of his supervised release, Maher must register as a sex offender and participate in mental health treatment, and a probation officer must be notified before he can use a computer or make contact with minors. He’s also barred from playing video game consoles. The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case.
