Thomas A. Shields, Child Pornography, Missouri 2013

Lee's Summit Man Sentenced for Child Pornography

A 45-year-old Lee's Summit, Missouri, man has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison without parole for possessing child pornography.

Thomas A. Shields, a registered sex offender, pleaded guilty to one count of possessing child pornography and one count of accessing the Internet with the intent to view child pornography on September 16, 2013, in federal court.

According to court documents, Shields was contacted at his residence on March 4, 2011, by law enforcement officials as part of a sex offender compliance sweep. Shields is required to register as a sex offender due to his 1995 felony conviction for sodomy with a victim under the age of 14, for which he was sentenced to eight years in state prison. Officers noticed that he possessed a computer he had not properly registered as required by the state's Sex Offender Registry and he was arrested.

Shields's computer was seized, according to court documents, and an examiner located numerous images of child pornography on the computer, including prepubescent children, sadistic conduct, and bondage. The examiner also found evidence of child pornography movies that had been downloaded, viewed, then deleted. The forensic examiner located thousands of images that had been deleted from the computer.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore. It was investigated by the Lee's Summit, Mo., Police Department and the Jackson County, Mo., Sheriff's Department.

The 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. 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. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab 'resources.'

Source: https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/project-safe-childhood-58