A Springfield, Missouri man has been sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in federal prison for his role in trading child pornography. Joshua Ryan Clark, 27, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool on January 26, 2015.
According to court documents, Clark actively traded child pornography via email, including depictions of prepubescent children as young as three years old engaged in sexual activity. He directly contacted other pedophiles via email and text, and even claimed to have sodomized a 12-year-old victim in one chat.
Law enforcement officers in Australia discovered several email messages from Clark to a resident of Queensland, Australia, to which Clark had attached images of child pornography, including one message containing 100 images. An FBI agent in Springfield received a 16 GB thumb drive from Yahoo! that contained the contents of Clark’s email account, which included 2,264 depictions of child pornography.
Clark admitted to using the email account to trade child pornography with numerous individuals beginning in 2006 or 2007. He has been ordered to pay $3,000 in restitution to his victims.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney James J. Kelleher and was investigated by the FBI as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
Clark was charged with receiving and distributing child pornography, and was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in federal prison without parole. His sentence is a significant blow to those who would seek to exploit and harm children through child pornography.
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.
Related Federal Cases
- Ryan Michael Moberg, Child Pornography Receipt, Missouri 2016 · Kansas
- Joshua Emanuel Wood, Receiving and Distributing Child Pornography, Missouri 2023 · Illinois
- Joshua Emanuel Wood, Child Pornography, Missouri 2024 · Illinois
- Addison Jones, Attempted Production of Child Pornography, Missouri 2023 · Kansas
- Steven Michael George, Distributed Child Pornography, Missouri 2023 · Kansas
Key Facts
- State: Missouri
- Category: Sex Crimes
- Source: DOJ Press Release â†â€â€
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