Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, announced that JONATHAN RHOADES, 32, formerly of Windsor, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer in New Haven to 108 months of imprisonment, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for distributing child pornography.
According to court documents and statements made in court, in December 2014, a member of the Connecticut State Police’s Computer Crimes squad, operating in an undercover capacity, accessed a peer-to-peer file sharing network and downloaded six videos of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct from an Internet Protocol (IP) address that was subsequently linked to RHOADES’s residence in Windsor.
On March 10, 2015, law enforcement officers executed a search warrant RHOADES’s residence and seized a desktop computer, laptop computer and other items. Forensic analysis of the seized computers revealed at least 1,533 images and 49 videos of child pornography, most of which featured children younger than the age of five.
RHOADES has been detained since his arrest on related state charges on March 18, 2015. On Jan. 3, 2017, he pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography.
In 2005, RHOADES, who had been serving in the U.S. Navy in Jacksonville, Florida, was convicted through a Special Court Martial in connection with his receipt of 98 images of child pornography. He was sentenced to 12 months of imprisonment and received a “bad conduct" discharge from the military.
This matter was investigated by the Connecticut State Police and Homeland Security Investigations. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy V. Gifford.
This prosecution is part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood Initiative, which is aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
To report cases of child exploitation, please visit www.cybertipline.com.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
