Hailey Man Sentenced for Possessing Child Porn
BOISE – Donald Wilson, 51, of Hailey, Idaho, was sentenced this morning to 63 months in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release for possessing sexually explicit images of minors, U.S. Attorney Wendy J. Olson announced. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge also ordered Wilson to attend sex offender treatment. He pleaded guilty to the charge in August 2011.
According to the plea agreement, Homeland Security agents received information that Wilson had used his credit card to purchase child pornography from a members-restricted commercial website. A search of Wilson's home resulted in the seizure of computers and computer storage media that contained more than 600 sexually explicit images of minors, including prepubescent minors. Many of images involved minors as young as three to six years of age engaging in sexual acts that Wilson had received via Yahoo! chat rooms. Reflecting the national and international scope of child pornography trafficking, the images in Wilson's collection included sexual abuse victims from Pennsylvania, Indiana, Texas, Washington state, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, England, Germany, Canada, Brazil, and Paraguay.
“The U.S. Attorney's Office and the law enforcement community will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute those who use the Internet to sexually exploit children,” said Olson. “Individuals who possess, view and share images of child pornography will be caught and punished.”
The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
This case was prosecuted 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 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, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is a collaborative effort by federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and communities to prevent and deter gun violence.
