Deirdre M. Daly, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, today announced that JONATHAN RHOADES, 32, formerly of Windsor, pleaded guilty yesterday before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Alker Meyer in New Haven to one count of distribution of child pornography.
According to court documents and statements made in court, in December 2014, a member of the Connecticut State Police’s Computer Crimes squad, operating in an undercover capacity, accessed a peer-to-peer file sharing network and downloaded six videos of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct from an Internet Protocol (IP) address that was subsequently linked to RHOADES’s residence in Windsor.
On March 10, 2015, law enforcement officers executed a search warrant RHOADES’s residence and seized a desktop computer, laptop computer and other items. Forensic analysis of the seized computers revealed at least 1,535 images and 49 videos of child pornography, most of which featured children younger than the age of five.
RHOADES has been detained since his arrest on related state charges on March 18, 2015. On November 10, 2015, a federal grand jury in Hartford returned an indictment charging RHOADES with one count of distribution of child pornography.
Judge Meyer scheduled sentencing for March 28, 2017, at which time RHOADES faces a mandatory minimum term of imprisonment of five years and a maximum term of imprisonment of 20 years.
This matter has been investigated by the Connecticut State Police and Homeland Security Investigations. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy V. Gifford.
This prosecution is part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood Initiative, which is aimed at protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.
To report cases of child exploitation, please visit www.cybertipline.com.