Fort Dodge Man Sentenced to 20 years for child pornography offenses
Contact: Peter Deegan
A man who downloaded child pornography using the Internet and possessed it on his computers was sentenced July 6, 2011, to 20 years in federal prison.
Michael Owings, age 54, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, received the sentence after a March 28, 2011, guilty plea to one count of receiving child pornography and two counts of possessing child pornography.
At the guilty plea, Owings admitted that, between March 2009 and October 2009, he used the Internet to download child pornography and possessed child pornography on two computers. At sentencing, the court also considered facts that Owings did not dispute, including his sexual abuse of children in the 1990s.
Owings was sentenced in Sioux City by United States District Court Judge Mark W. Bennett. Owings was sentenced to 240 months’ imprisonment. Special assessments of $300 were imposed, and Owings must also serve a 10-year term of supervised release after the prison term. He must comply with all sex offender registration and public notification requirements. There is no parole in the federal system.
Owings 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 Homeland Security Investigations and the Iowa Crimes Against Children Task Force.
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 CR 10-3051.
