Lebanon Sex Offender Sentenced for Child Porn

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Lebanon, Mo., man who is a registered sex offender was sentenced in federal court today for receiving child pornography over the Internet.

Wayne Harlan Files, 78, of Lebanon, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool to 262 months in federal prison without parole.

Files is a registered sex offender due to a 1993 conviction for forcible sodomy. On April 23, 2015, Files pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography over the Internet between Nov. 1, 2011, and Feb. 1, 2012.

After Files had been arrested in February 2012 on unrelated state charges of sexual misconduct involving a child and child molestation, family members discovered child pornography on his computer while they were attempting to install software. They contacted the Lebanon, Mo., Police Department. Officers seized the computers, phones and other digital storage media in the home for forensic examination. Investigators found numerous images of child pornography on Files’s computer.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney James J. Kelleher. It was investigated by the Lebanon, Mo., Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Project Safe Childhood

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 the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc . For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab "resources." For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab "resources."