Henderson man gets 14 years for child pornography
A Henderson man was ordered to serve 14 years in federal prison Wednesday for receiving hundreds of images of child pornography, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Andrew John Gibson, convicted after a three-day jury trial of one count of receipt of child pornography, also must undergo lifetime registration as a sex offender, acting U.S. Attorney Steven W. Myhre said in a statement.
A jury convicted the 28-year-old Gibson in April after prosecutors argued that he used an online file-sharing network known as Ares P2P network from June 19, 2013, to about Nov. 21, 2013, to access and download 307 images and 201 videos of child pornography.
Gibson, who represented himself at trial, had been staying with his aunt when authorities tracked child pornography to his computer, court records show.
Under a nationwide initiative known as Project Safe Childhood, the case was investigated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations and the Metropolitan Police Department, according to the release.
Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson for a sentence of 210 months, or 17½ years behind bars.
“It should not be forgotten that while the defendant did not himself physically abuse these victims, he possessed the videos and images of their abuse for his own sexual gratification,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Burton wrote in a sentencing memo. “Because of him and others like him, there is a market for these images without which the abuse would have ended at the time the abuser stopped abusing the victim. In this way, child pornography is the worst type of exploitation because it is never-ending.”
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