Local man gets 68 months in prison for child porn

James Watt, 38, of Mountain Home, Idaho, was sentenced Tuesday to 68 months in federal prison for possession of sexually explicit images of minors, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge also ordered Watt to serve ten years of supervised release following his prison term and to complete 100 hours of community service.

Watt pleaded guilty to the charge in February 2010.

In April 2006, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Cyber Crime Center began investigating a criminal organization operating a commercial child pornography website.

The investigation showed that on October 12, 2006, Watt had purchased a membership to a child pornography website.

On January 29, 2008, ICE agents served a search warrant at Watt's residence in Mountain Home. As a result of the search, numerous items were seized and determined to contain sexually explicit images of minors, including three computers and two hard drives. Agents recovered computer media containing approximately 2,590 sexually explicit images and 113 child pornography videos. More than 500 of the images depicted prepubescent minors in explicit sexual acts, including sadistic images of children enduring painful and humiliating abuse.

In sentencing Watt, a nineteen-year Air Force veteran, Judge Lodge echoed what Congress, the Supreme Court, and the United States Sentencing Commission have all said -- that preventing sexual exploitation of children is an important government objective because of the psychological and physical effects such abuse has on victims and their families. "Those who download images of children being sexually abused fuel a demand for more such material, and directly victimize each child portrayed by violating their right to privacy," the U.S. Attorney's office said in a prepared statement. "These children suffer profound emotional injury from the abuse itself, and when pictures of their abuse are circulated on the Internet, they suffer additionally from a fear of exposure, and the tension of keeping the abuse a secret.