Texas Ex-Corrections Officer Gets Eight Years for Child Porn

sexual abuse
AP/Matt Houston

A west Texas man, formerly a corrections officer who pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography earlier this year, got eight years in federal prison Monday for the crime.

James Kenny Crawley received 97 months, or eight years and one month, in federal prison after U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater sentenced the Amarillo resident on one count of possession of child pornography, announced John Parker, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.

Crawley, 60, used a laptop computer at his residence to search the internet for images and videos of child pornography, according to the documents filed in the case. In the course of searching for this material, Crawley located, downloaded and viewed roughly 5,000 images and more than 100 videos constituting child pornography, stated a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. It also noted that some of the images law enforcement officials retrieved in their investigation included prepubescent minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

After the sentencing portion of the hearing on Monday, the court ordered Crawley to surrender to the Bureau of Prison on July 18.

Back on February 28, Crawley pleaded guilty to the one count of child porn possession in Fitzwater’s courtroom, according to a previous U.S. Attorney’s press release. At the time, he was released on bond and faced up to 20 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, plus a lifetime of supervised release. Possession of child pornography is a third degree felony in Texas.

The Ochiltree County Sheriff’s Office, Texas Rangers, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated the case last year. Early on in the probe, the Ochiltree County Sheriff’s Office learned that Crawley, an Ochiltree County employee, was the local person suspected of possessing child pornography. KFDA reported Crawley worked as an officer at the Ochiltree County Jail located in Perryton in the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle. County Sheriff Terry Bouchard confirmed to the Amarillo TV news outlet Crawley’s employment as a county correctional officer. Authorities held Crawley at the jail where he previously worked upon his arrest in August 2016.

Bouchard told KVII that once they identified the suspect as Crawley, his office contacted the Texas Rangers requesting their agency take over the case. In turn, the Texas Rangers contacted the FBI in Amarillo after which the multiple agencies continued to investigate the case.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice, to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the 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 sexually exploit children, and identify and rescue victims.

Follow Merrill Hope, a member of the original Breitbart Texas team, on Twitter.

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