ST. LOUIS - A man from Montgomery City, Missouri was sentenced Thursday to seven years in prison for possessing child pornography.
U.S. District Judge Matthew T. Schelp ordered the sentence to run consecutive to whatever Austin E. Pearson, 23, receives on a pending state case. Judge Schelp also ordered Pearson to pay $39,500 restitution to the victims that have been identified in the child sexual abuse material he possessed. After his release from prison, Pearson will be on supervised release for life.
Pearson pleaded guilty in November to one felony count of possession of child pornography. He admitted possession of over 60 files containing child pornography in a Google account, 68 videos in his Dropbox account and more than 200 files on his iPhone and hard drives. Among the victims appearing in those files were children who appeared to be toddler-age being sexually assaulted, Pearson’s plea says.
The case was investigated by the St. Charles County Cyber Crime Task Force and the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson is prosecuting the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys