Sean P. Costello U.S. Attorney | U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama
Austin Dickens was sentenced on March 13 to 200 months in prison for distributing child pornography, according to an announcement by U.S. Attorney Sean P. Costello of the Southern District of Alabama.
Court documents show that in May 2024, Dickens, age 29, used his social media profile to contact other users and offered to sell them up to 6,000 images of child pornography. Prices ranged from $10 to $50. To attract buyers, Dickens sent videos and images through the platform’s messaging application. The material included children as young as four years old engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He received payments for these images and videos through a banking application set up with his personal information.
After serving his prison sentence, Dickens will be placed on supervised release with the United States’ Probation Office for fifteen years. He has also been ordered to complete mental health and substance abuse treatment programs and must register as a sex offender for life under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. In addition, he is required to pay $3,000 in restitution to identified victims.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office investigated this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tandice H. Blackwood prosecuted it on behalf of the United States.
This prosecution was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative started by the Department of Justice in May 2006 aimed at combating child sexual exploitation and abuse by coordinating federal, state, and local resources to locate offenders and rescue victims.
