Adairsville Man Sentenced for Possessing Child Pornography

JERALD WAYNE ANDERSON, 64, of Adairsville, Georgia, was sentenced today by Senior United States District Judge Robert L. Vining, Jr., to serve more than 8 years in prison on a charge of receiving child pornography.

“Child pornography is a polite term for images of children being sexually abused,” said United States Attorney David E. Nahmias. “Instead of recoiling in horror at these images, as a normal person would, this defendant downloaded and collected thousands of images depicting the sexual exploitation of vulnerable children. Today’s harsh but just sentence is the appropriate punishment for a man who supported the abuse of these children by collecting and viewing child pornography.”

ANDERSON was sentenced to 8 years, 1 month in prison to be followed by 20 years of supervised release. ANDERSON was convicted of these charges on August 14, 2008, when he pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography through the use of a computer.

According to United States Attorney Nahmias and the information presented in court: In October 2007, ANDERSON was posing as a 13-year-old girl on the Internet and was chatting with an undercover police officer from Broward County, Florida, who also claimed to be a 13-year-old girl. Within minutes of beginning the chat, ANDERSON sent the police officer images of a young girl in various stages of nudity, including images that displayed her genitals. ANDERSON claimed that he was the child in the photographs and asked the undercover officer for nude pictures of herself. ANDERSON engaged in a similar online chat with an undercover police officer from Bensalem Township, Pennsylvania, in November 2007. Again, within minutes of beginning the chat, ANDERSON sent the same photos of a nude girl to the undercover officer. Later in November and again in December 2007, ANDERSON engaged in chats with the Florida undercover officer, again claiming to be a young girl, although he used different names from the earlier chats. He again sent nude photographs of a young female. The undercover officers issued subpoenas to various businesses to determine the location of the person who was distributing images of child pornography. The results pointed to a residential address in Adairsville, Georgia. In January 2008, the undercover officers passed the information on to Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and within days of receiving this information the agents obtained and executed a search warrant for the Adairsville address. The agents found that ANDERSON had approximately 140 CD’s and DVD’s containing thousands of images of child pornography. ANDERSON organized and labeled his collection of child pornography for easy access. The images on the discs showed children as young as 5 years old being sexually abused and engaged in sexually explicit conduct. ANDERSON admitted that he had collected the child pornography and that he had sent images of child pornography to at least 100 other persons.

This case is being brought as part of Project Safe Childhood. In February 2006, the Attorney General launched Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorney's Offices around the country, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

This case was investigated by Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistance in this case was provided from the Broward County (FL) and Bensalem Township (PA) Police Departments.

Assistant United States Attorney Paul Jones prosecuted the case.

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