U.S. Attorney Announces Child Exploitation Conviction, Sentencing of Anderson Man
Hogsett Says Case is More Results as Part of Ongoing Effort to Protect Hoosier Children

INDIANAPOLIS—Joseph H. Hogsett, the United States Attorney, announced today that James V. Carroll, age 69, of Anderson, has been convicted of child exploitation and possessing child pornography. As a result, U.S. District Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson has sentenced Carroll to 30 years in federal prison and has ordered that he pay $10,000 in victim restitution. This case comes as part of the U.S. Attorney’s district-wide Project Safe Childhood initiative.

“This effective life sentence reaffirms the message that there are serious consequences for victimizing Hoosier children,” Hogsett said. “Through our nationally recognized Project Safe Childhood team, the U.S. Attorney’s Office is dedicated to aggressively investigating and prosecuting these troubling cases.”

Last year, Carroll was charged with six counts of child exploitation and one count of possessing child pornography. According to court documents, investigators became aware of the defendant when the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department received information that a 13-year-old girl had reported child abuse to a local advocacy center. Carroll’s abuse of the girl began months after the death of one of the child’s parents, when Carroll volunteered to babysit the girl to assist her surviving parent. The girl’s surviving parent was not involved in or aware of Carroll’s abuse. The girl reported that Carroll had exploited her both through physical abuse and by taking sexually explicit photographs of her.

Law enforcement officers subsequently executed a search warrant at Carroll’s residence in Anderson, at which time the defendant admitted to collecting images and videos of child pornography online. Investigators located numerous images and videos of child pornography in the defendant’s home, including a number of images of the victim engaged in sexually explicit conduct. All told, the six counts of child exploitation against the defendant covered abusive conduct that stretched from 2002 through 2007.

According to Senior Litigation Counsel Steven D. DeBrota and Assistant U.S. Attorney

Zachary A. Myers, who together prosecuted the case for the government, Carroll was ordered by Judge Magnus-Stinson to pay the victim $10,000 in restitution. Federal sentencing law requires defendants to serve 85 percent of their time in a prison facility. Should the defendant serve his full prison term, he will be under federally supervised release for the remainder of his life.

This case was the result of work by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s Cyber Crimes Unit. The prosecution is part of the U.S. Attorney’s 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.

Hogsett pointed out that in the last Project Safe Childhood reporting year, the Office prosecuted 52 defendants, an increase of 37 percent over the prior year, and 49 defendants were convicted and sentenced. These are all-time records for the Office. The Office conviction rate for PSC cases was 100 percent, a level it has been at since 1991.

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 on Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc.