Source: United States Department of Justice News
COVINGTON, Ky.— A Morrow, Ohio man, Steven Richard Stiles, Jr., 34, was sentenced to 364 months in federal prison on Tuesday, by U.S. District Judge David Bunning, after pleading guilty to using a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct to produce child pornography.
According to Stiles’ plea agreement, from June 18, 2021 to December 16, 2021, he communicated with five minor victims via Snapchat, persuaded them to produce visual depictions of themselves engaged in sexually explicit conduct, and convinced them to send him the depictions through Snapchat. Stiles admitted that he knew that the visual depictions were of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Stiles pleaded guilty to the charge in April 2022.
Under federal law, Stiles must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence. Upon his release from prison, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for life.
Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Jerry Templet, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); and Chief Kyle Rader, Erlanger Police Department, jointly announced the sentence.
The investigation was conducted by the DHS-HSI and Erlanger Police Department. The United States was represented by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Andrew Spievack and Amanda Harris Huang.
This case was prosecuted as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
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