Ridgely Resident Enters Plea in Federal Court

MARTINSBURG, WV—A 47-year-old Ridgely, West Virginia resident entered a plea of guilty on October 20, 2011, in United States District Court in Martinsburg before Chief Judge John Preston Bailey.

United States Attorney William J. Ihlenfeld, II, announced that: ROBERT GLENN HARE entered a plea of guilty to one count of an Indictment charging him with possession of in excess of 20,000 images and in excess of 100 videos of child pornography on December 17, 2009, in Mineral County. As part of his plea, HARE agrees to the forfeiture of a Compaq desktop computer, containing one Western Digital HD; one Dell desktop computer containing one Seagate hard drive; one IBM Laptop computer containing one Hitachi hard drive; and two other hard drives. HARE, who is in custody pending sentencing, faces a maximum exposure of 10 years’ imprisonment and a fine of $250,000.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Paul T. Camilletti and was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

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 U.S. 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, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.