Shannon T. Lewis, Child Pornography Production, New York 2015

A 41-year-old Elmira, New York resident has been convicted of producing child pornography, according to a guilty plea entered in U.S. District Court. Shannon T. Lewis, a 41-year-old man from Elmira, was found to have produced child pornography by videotaping a 16-year-old girl being raped, a crime that was committed while the victim was in Lewis's custody.

The crime was first identified during a sexual assault investigation conducted by the Elmira Police Department, which learned that Lewis harbored at-risk minors who ran away from a nearby juvenile facility. During the investigation, police discovered that Lewis gave the minors drugs, including bath salts, and that he had videotaped the rape of the 16-year-old girl.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of New York announced the guilty plea, which carries a mandatory minimum 15 years and a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, or both. Lewis was convicted of Rape in Chemung County and is presently serving a sentence of two and a half years in State Prison for that offense.

Lewis was remanded to the custody of the United States Marshals Service pending his federal sentencing, which is scheduled for May 27, 2015, at 11:00 a.m. before Judge Charles J. Siragusa.

The 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.

The plea is the culmination of an investigation on the part of Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Corning Resident Office, and members of the Elmira Police Department, under the direction of Chief Michael Robertson.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdny/pr/elmira-man-pleads-guilty-producing-child-pornography