Niagara County Man Sentenced for Receipt of Child Pornography
| U.S. Attorney’s Office May 11, 2009 |
BUFFALO, NY—Mitchell Brokob, 41, who had pled guilty to receipt of child pornography, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and lifetime supervision, by Chief Judge Richard J. Arcara, U.S. District, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Kathleen M. Mehltretter of the Western District of New York.
Brokob was previously sentenced to 25 years to life in Niagara County after he was convicted there of kidnapping, drugging, and sexually assaulting a young girl at knife point as she waited for her school bus in North Tonawanda in March of 2008. After being charged in Niagara County, a computer recovered from Brokob's North Tonawanda residence in June of 2008, was found to contain images of child pornography and a forensic analysis of that computer revealed that search terms including "preteen child rape porn" and "cold steel knives" had been typed on the computer.
Assistant U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr., the prosecutor who handled the case, and Chief Judge Richard J. Arcara, U.S. District Court, both commended the minor victim in the related Niagara County case for both her courage and intelligence in escaping and overcoming her attack by the defendant.
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 (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.
The federal charges were jointly investigated by the Buffalo Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the direction of Laurie Bennett, Special Agent in Charge, and the North Tonawanda Police Department, under the direction of Chief Randy Szukala.