DC man sentenced to 7.5 years for possessing, distributing child pornography
Nov 01, 2024
Editor's Note: This article includes details that might be disturbing. Discretion is advised.
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) -- A D.C. man was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison Friday for owning and uploading videos of underage girls being raped and sexually abused.
The U.S. Attorney's Office (USAO) for D.C. said in a news release that 37-year-old Stephen Rattley Johnson uploaded these videos in 2020.
Court documents and evidence said that in September and October of 2020, Johnson "uploaded hundreds of child pornography files to his Google Drive cloud storage account."
Google identified 220 files as known child pornography, closed his account and reported the files to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
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Officials arrested him on Oct. 7, 2021, while he lived in the H Street Corridor in Northeast. Law enforcement took his phone and laptop from his home. Johnson had deleted the files, but experts were able to recover information proving that he had received the files and opened and watched them.
Johnson's web browser history also showed that he had visited child pornography sites online, and his cell phone provided evidence proving that he continued to seek child pornography after Google closed his account, according to the USAO.
The USAO stated that the videos depicted children under 12 years old.
A federal jury found Johnson guilty of five counts of transportation of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography in April. A judge also ordered him to pay $52,600 in restitution and special assessments.
Johnson will have to serve 10 years of supervised release and register as a sex offender after his prison sentence.