Arthur Charles Clements, Receipt of Child Pornography, Maryland 2015

Temple Hills Man Pleads Guilty to Receipt of Child Pornography

Greenbelt, Maryland – Arthur Charles Clements, age 57, of Temple Hills, Maryland, pleaded guilty today to receiving child pornography.

Clements faces a minimum mandatory sentence of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years in prison for receiving child pornography, according to his plea agreement.

As part of his plea agreement, Clements must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA).

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Andre R. Watson of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); and Colonel William M. Pallozzi, Superintendent of the Maryland State Police.

Clements was previously convicted of indecent exposure in St. Mary’s County Circuit Court in 2007, stemming from images and videos he sent to a teenage girl.

Law enforcement seized a laptop computer that contained over 1,900 videos and 1,100 images of child pornography, including images and videos depicting sadistic or masochistic conduct and other depictions of violence performed on prepubescent children, during a search warrant at Clements’ residence on July 24, 2015.

Clements also admitted to chatting via Skype for at least six months with an adult male living in another state who was sexually abusing a nine-year-old girl.

Within 12 days, Special Agents with HSI identified and arrested the individual with whom Clements chatted via Skype, Joshua Logan Thornton, age 31, of Wynne, Arkansas.

The child was rescued, and Thornton pleaded guilty to one count of production of child pornography in the Eastern District of Arkansas on November 28, 2015.

U.S. District Judge George J. Hazel has scheduled sentencing for June 1, 2016, at 9:00 a.m.

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.

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