Godfrey Man Pleads Guilty and Is Sentenced for Child Pornography

A. Courtney Cox, United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, announced today that on January 8, 2009, TILDEN B. SPRAGUE, age 66, of Godfrey, Illinois, pled guilty to charges involving child pornography. After the entry of his guilty plea, SPRAGUE was sentenced to 90 months’ imprisonment, ordered to pay a $600 fine, and placed on supervised release for a period of 10 years after his release from prison. SPRAGUE also paid $25,000 in lieu of the forfeiture of his Godfrey home, which SPRAGUE used to facilitate his crimes.

Police found that SPRAGUE had received and possessed child pornography during the execution of a search warrant at his Godfrey home on September 5, 2007. SPRAGUE downloaded thousands of images of child pornography from the Internet and stored them in various media in his home.

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 investigation in this case was conducted by the Madison County Sheriff’s Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Boyce.