A New York man faces 250 years in prison after pleading guilty this week to over a dozen child pornography counts related to a 2013 blackmail plot in which he tricked his teenage daughter into sending him sexually explicit photographs of herself.
The Herkimer County man — whose name has been withheld to protect the identity of his daughter, the victim of a sex crime — admitted in court on Monday that he masqueraded online as a 16-year-old boy in order to acquire pornographic pictures of his child when she was only 14, Syracuse.com reported this week.
Later on, the father referenced the pictures while he sexually abused his daughter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Fletcher wrote in court filings seen by the website.
Court records indicate the 41-year-old New Yorker opened up accounts on Instagram, AOL and a texting service in September 2013 under the assumed identity of a teenage boy from the nearby city of Watertown. He then used those accounts to send messages to his own daughter and forge an online relationship, and before long the two referred to one another as boyfriend and girlfriend.
Posing as a teenage boy, the father repeatedly pleaded for his own daughter to send sexually explicit photos until she finally obliged, Syracuse.com reported. When she tried to break the relationship off in November 2013, the “boyfriend” began a blackmail campaign.
“I tell u what u want to be gone then send me nudes and close ups and I will let u go,” the supposed teenager said in a text message to the girl.
“No,” she responded. “I’m not going to do that. That’s another reason I’m leaving. All you talk about is sex sex and more sex. Honestly that is not what a relationship is about.”
When the girl wouldn’t comply, the man, posing as her online boyfriend, threatened to shared the lewd images with the teen’s father.
“Then I will send these to your dad and then I won’t have to worry about anyone else having u,” the man wrote, according to court documents.
“I told you that a bunch of times when we were dating that I don’t like those pics and now you are threatening me that if I don’t send you those then you’ll send my dad the ones I sent you before?” she wrote back. “My life is ruined.”
The girl soon after ended the relationship for good, but before long received a text message from a person claiming to be the mother of the nonexistent boyfriend. According to court documents, the make-believe mother told the teen that her ex had committed suicide after the break-up.
The girl’s father soon after told his daughter that the boy had shared the pornographic images with him, and “referred to them and how much he liked them while he sexually abused the girl,” prosecutors claimed.
The abuse continued for a year until the girl opened up to a school nurse, court documents claim. Police then opened up an investigation, learned that the girl had been in an online relationship with a teenager from Watertown and ultimately discovered that the texting account used by the boy had been operated from within the girl’s own house.
The father pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to 12 counts of enticing a child to produce child pornography, as well as sending and receiving child porn, Syracuse.com reported. Sexual abuse charges are still pending in Herkimer County Court in central New York state.
“It is very emotional,” the father told U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes at Monday’s hearing, the website reported. “I’m giving away many years of my life.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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