A 60-year-old Olympia, Washington resident was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to 48 months in prison and a lifetime of supervised release for possessing images of child sexual abuse, announced U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran.  DONALD A. DELATEUR was arrested in May 2018, as part of Operation Broken Heart – an investigation into peer-to–peer file sharing of images of child rape and abuse.   A court-authorized search of DELATEUR’s electronic devices revealed they contained images of children being raped and sexually abused.  At the sentencing hearing U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle said “It is difficult to overstate the seriousness” of child pornography offenses.  The victims of these offenses suffer their own “life sentence.”  

            “Victims of child sexual abuse, whose worst moments are video recorded and shared over the internet, are re-victimized each and every time an offender views those images or videos,” said U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran.  

            In 2005, DELATEUR was convicted in Thurston County Superior Court of possessing child pornography.  In 2015, DELATEUR was again contacted by federal investigators after his internet protocol (IP) address came up in an investigation of peer-to-peer file sharing of child pornography.  However, in that instance, DELATEUR had been able to scrub his devices of images of child rape and molestation.  At the time, DELATEUR was warned that if he continued his file sharing activities, he could face federal prison time.  In 2018, his IP address was again linked to the trading of child pornography.  This time the forensic examination of his devices uncovered the images of child sexual abuse.

            DELATEUR pleaded guilty in January 2019.

            Operation Broken Heart resulted in the arrest of more than 2,300 suspected online child sex offenders during a three-month, nationwide operation conducted by 61 Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces.  During March, April and May of 2018, the ICAC task forces investigated more the 25,200 complaints of technology-facilitated crimes against children.

            This investigation was led by Homeland Security Investigations as part of the Seattle-area ICAC.  The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Matthew Hampton.

          This case was brought 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 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.justice.gov/psc