The Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Vermont stated that District Judge Geoffrey Crawford sentenced William Allen, 32, to twenty-five years in jail based on his conviction for receiving child pornography. Allen, from Barton, Vermont, must serve a lifetime period of supervised release after completing his prison sentence.
Allen, who has prior Vermont convictions for possessing child pornography and for lewd and lascivious conduct with a child, was initially charged in state court with child pornography offenses in June 2014. A federal indictment was returned in July 2015 against Allen and his wife, Kerissa Allen, for child pornography charges. Kerissa Allen pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography in February 2016. William Allen pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography in August 2016. Kerissa Allen was previously sentenced by Judge Crawford to four years in jail based on her guilty plea.
At the sentencing hearing for William Allen, which began June 27, the government presented evidence that Allen sexually abused three children prior to his state arrest. Based on that evidence, the court found that Allen had engaged in a pattern of sexual abuse of children within the meaning of the federal sentencing guidelines. Even though Allen was convicted of receiving child pornography, the court could and did consider Allen’s contact offenses against children in fashioning the appropriate sentence. Because of Allen’s prior convictions, he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of fifteen years in jail. The court agreed with the government that William and Kerissa Allen took digital images of the abuse of two of the children, though the storage media for those images was never located. Further, Judge Crawford found that Allen urged Kerissa Allen to attempt to falsely take the blame for his child pornography crimes charged by the state.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations, the Vermont Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, the Vermont State Police, and the Orleans County States’ Attorney Jennifer Barrett. The case represents another example of the extraordinary cooperation in Vermont between federal law enforcement and its state and local partners. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Paul Van de Graaf. Mr. Allen was represented by Burlington Attorney Robert Katims.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
