TUCSON, Ariz. – Today, Donald Macarthur, 39, of Lehi, Utah, was sentenced by U.S. Chief District Judge Raner C. Collins to 20 years in prison. Macarthur had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of production of child pornography in two separate cases. Macarthur’s term of imprisonment will be followed by lifetime supervised release, with stringent sex offender conditions, including the condition that he register as a sex offender.
Macarthur used the internet to meet young girls on modeling and pro-anorexia websites. Macarthur then communicated with the girls through email and text messages. Specifically, Macarthur communicated with a thirteen-year-old girl in Tucson and a fourteen-year-old girl in Mississippi. During their communications, Macarthur manipulated them by acting as an anorexia coach, encouraging them to starve themselves, and then requesting that they send him sexually explicit photos. If the girls did not comply with his requests, Macarthur threatened that he would no longer coach them and ridiculed them. It is suspected that Macarthur possibly had 51 other unidentified victims.
This case was brought 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 United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’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 via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
The investigation in this case was conducted by the Tucson Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tucson. The prosecution was handled by Carmen F. Corbin and Erica L. Seger, District of Arizona, Tucson.
CASE NUMBER: CR-14-2005-TUC-RCC / CR-16-0396-TUC-RCC
RELEASE NUMBER: 2017-012_ Macarthur
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