A Grove City, Pennsylvania resident has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison for transporting material depicting the sexual exploitation of minors. The sentence, announced by United States Attorney Troy Rivetti, was handed down by United States District Judge Christy Criswell Wiegand on March 5, 2026.
Michael William Boston, 41, will serve 84 months in prison followed by 10 years of supervised release. Court documents show that on October 25, 2022, Boston uploaded material showing the sexual exploitation of minors to a cloud-based server. As part of his plea agreement, he admitted to transporting child sexual abuse material on two other occasions in 2023 and possessing more than 1,500 images and videos across seven electronic devices. Some images involved toddler-aged and infant males as young as several months old; others depicted acts of bestiality and blindfolded children tied to stationary objects.
Boston had previously worked as a resource instructor for hearing-impaired students at an intermediate unit. His job involved traveling to schools across nine Pennsylvania counties and working with children from pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade who had hearing impairments. He was also active in his local community and churches. Following the prosecution, Boston lost his teaching position and surrendered his teaching license.
Assistant United States Attorney Kelly M. Locher prosecuted the case for the government.
United States Attorney Rivetti praised Homeland Security Investigations and the Pennsylvania State Police’s Northwest Computer Crime Unit for their roles in investigating the case.
"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 United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), 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.justice.gov/psc," according to the press release.
