Mountain Home man sentenced for child exploitation

A Mountain Home man was sentenced on Monday to eight years in prison for possessing sexually explicit images of minors.

During his hearing in U.S. District Court in Boise, James W. Carr IV, 23, was also sentenced to 20 years of supervised release.

U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge also imposed a $5,000 fine and ordered Carr to forfeit assets used in the commission of the offense. He pleaded guilty to the charge Aug. 9.

According to the plea agreement, an Elmore County woman reported to the Boise Police Department that Carr was texting sexually provocative messages to her 14-year-old daughter in April 2012. With the mother's permission, detectives assumed the child's identity and continued the text conversation with Carr.

During the chats that followed, Carr sent "her" sexually explicit images of himself and close-up images of the genitals of another juvenile female. He repeatedly asked the "minor" to send him images of her bare private parts.

The investigators contacted Carr at his place of employment -- a fast food restaurant in Mountain Home -- and seized his cell phone. A forensic examiner later found 35 images of another minor female (not the 14-year-old) on the phone, in which the girl was either fully clothed or in various states of undress. The images included full frontal nudity and 14 close-up images of the minor female's genitals and pubic area.

The case was investigated by the Boise Police Department and the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, with assistance from the Idaho Department of Correction.

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. Led by the U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, 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.