Jacksonville Child Sex Offender Faces Federal Charges for Producing and Possessing Child Pornography
| U.S. Attorney’s Office April 14, 2014 |
JACKSONVILLE—United States Attorney A. Lee Bentley, III announced today that a federal grand jury last week returned an indictment charging Christopher Richard Cloonan (44, Jacksonville) with three counts of using a minor to produce images depicting child pornography, one count of possessing child pornography, and three counts of committing a felony offense involving a minor while being required to register as a sex offender. As a result of his prior child sex convictions, Cloonan faces a mandatory sentence of life in federal prison on each of the four production counts, a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, up to 20 years’ imprisonment for the possession count, and additional terms of 10 years in prison for each of the sex offense counts.
Cloonan was arrested for his current offenses on March 12, 2014, at his residence in Jacksonville and has been in custody on related state charges since that time.
An indictment is merely a formal charge that a defendant has committed one or more violations of federal criminal law, and every defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
This case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Jacksonville and Washington, D.C., the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, and the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department. It is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown.
It is another case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc.