sioux city man gets quarter century for creating child pornography
Contact: Peter Deegan
A man who sexually exploited a child by taking child pornography pictures was sentenced June 7, 2010, to 25 years in federal prison.
Sengkeo Phanaphay, age 48, of Sioux City, Iowa, received the sentence after a March 9, 2010, guilty plea to one count of sexual exploitation of a child.
At the guilty plea, Phanaphay admitted that, between April 2009 and June 2009, in his Sioux City residence, he created child pornography by taking sexually explicit photographs of an eight-year-old boy.
Phanaphay was sentenced in Sioux City by United States District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett. Phanaphay was sentenced to 300 months’ imprisonment. A special assessment of $100 was imposed, and Phanaphay must also serve a life term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
Phanaphay is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Mark Tremmel and was investigated by the Sioux City Police Department.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. 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.
Court file information is available at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is 09-4035.
