Two West Texas Men Plead Guilty to Child Porn Charges in Unrelated Cases

Lubbock, Texas — January 23, 2009 — In federal court in Lubbock yesterday before U.S. District Judge Sam R. Cummings, Rory Dale Worthan, 43, of Big Spring, Texas, and Trey Dustin Taylor, 23, of Cisco, Texas, pled guilty to child pornography charges, announced acting U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Judge Cummings ordered pre-sentence investigations with sentencing dates to be scheduled after those investigations are completed. Both defendants remain on bond.

Worthan pled guilty to one count of possession of child pornography and faces a maximum statutory sentence of up to 10 years in prison. Taylor pled guilty to one count of interstate receipt of child pornography and faces a maximum statutory sentence of not less than five years nor more than 20 years in prison. Each faces up to a lifetime of supervised release and each could also be ordered to pay a fine of up to $250,000. Each will be required to register as a sex offender.

According to documents filed in Court, Worthan admitted that on February 8, 2007, he had an image of child pornography on his computer’s hard drive that he had downloaded from the Internet.

In documents filed in Court, Taylor admitted that in March 2007, he became interested in child pornography and began using the Internet to collect images of child pornography from Yahoo! groups and through Limewire peer-to-peer software file sharing. Taylor admitted that while searching for child pornography on the Internet on November 5, 2007, he knowingly received a video depicting a female child engaged in sexually explicit conduct with an adult male.

These cases were 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 United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), 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.projectsafechildhood.gov

The cases were investigated by Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, and the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven M. Sucsy of the Lubbock, Texas, U.S. Attorney's Office is prosecuting both cases.