BOSTON – A registered sex offender was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Springfield in connection with persuading a 16-year-old boy to travel to New York to engage in sexual activity.
Ronald S. Brown, 53, of Williamstown, Mass., was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Mark G. Mastroianni to 15 years in prison and 10 years of supervised release. In November 2015, he pleaded guilty to one count of interstate travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor and one count of possession of material involving the sexual exploitation of minors.
Brown, a registered sex offender based upon a prior conviction for a sexual assault of a 14 year-old, engaged in thousands of online interactions with a 16-year-old boy between Dec. 27, 2012 and Jan. 19, 2013, to persuade him to run away from his Midwestern home to engage in sexual activity. On Jan. 7, 2013, Brown sent the boy a one-way ticket to fly to Newark International Airport in New Jersey, and on Jan. 19, 2013, Brown picked the boy up at the Newark airport, and then transported him to New York to engage in sex. On three separate dates, Brown also sexually exploited the teenager by producing visual images of the minor engaging in lewd and lascivious conduct.
The boy was recovered in New York after his mother alerted police that her son was missing and believed to be meeting with Brown. During an interview on Jan. 20, 2013, Brown falsely told a federal agent that he believed the child to be 18 years old.
United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz and Harold H. Shaw, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division, made the announcement. The case was investigated with assistance from the Massachusetts State Police, the Williamstown Police Department and the New York State Police. It was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven H. Breslow of Ortiz's Springfield Branch Office.
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood. In 2006, the Department of Justice created Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from exploitation and abuse. Led by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the DOJ’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children, as well as identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov/.