Mexican Citizen Sentenced For Producing Child Pornography

DALLAS — Gerson Gonzalez Tovar, 25, who was living in Mesquite, Texas, was sentenced this afternoon before U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade after pleading guilty in March 2017 to one count of production of child pornography, announced John Parker, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.

Judge Kinkeade sentenced Tovar to 204 months in federal prison, to be followed by 10 years of supervised release. He has been in custody since his arrest in May 2016.

According to documents filed in the case and facts presented at the sentencing hearing, in 2014 Tovar contacted a 15-year-old girl using Facebook. Tovar knew that the girl was 15 years old. During the victim girl’s summer break in 2014, Tovar drove to her house, convinced her to get into the car he was driving, and engaged in sexually explicit conduct with her. Tovar met with the girl again on April 9, 2015. On this date, Tovar picked up the victim from her school and again engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Tovar, using his phone, filmed the girl engaging in sexually explicit conduct with him and directed the girl to send him child pornography of herself. He messaged the girl asking her how many times she would let him have sex with her when he went to her school.

In addition to the 15-year-old victim, Tovar met with a 13-year-old girl on more than one occasion and attempted to engage in sexually explicit conduct with the 13-year-old.

The matter was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative, which was launched in May 2006 by the 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. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/. For more information about internet safety education, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/ and click on the tab “resources.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Dallas Police Department investigated. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jamie L. Hoxie was in charge of the prosecution.

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