St. Augustine Man Sentenced To More Than 14 Years In Federal Prison For Attempting To Entice Two Young Children For Sex

Jacksonville, Florida – United States District Judge Marcia Morales Howard has sentenced Brian Ray Dunlap (67, St. Augustine) to 14 years and 7 months in federal prison for attempting to entice two young children to engage in sexual activity. Dunlap was also ordered to serve a 10-year term of supervised release and to register as a sex offender.

Dunlap had pleaded guilty on July 25, 2019.    

According to court documents, evidence, and testimony, on October 6, 2018, a detective with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, who was posing online as a custodial family member of two children ages 9 and 12, received an email message from Dunlap. Over the next three days, Dunlap and the undercover detective exchanged emails and text messages about Dunlap’s desire to meet the children to engage in sexual activity with them. Dunlap advised that he was an amateur photographer and that he wanted to “[t]ake their pictures naked” and perform oral sex on them. Dunlap provided the undercover detective with graphic details about the sexual acts that he wished to perform on the two children, and he offered to pay the undercover detective $200 for sex with the children. Dunlap told the undercover detective that finding someone that would permit him to have sex with their children was “a dream come true.” 

On October 9, 2018, Dunlap traveled to a prearranged location in St. Johns County to meet and have sex with the two children and was arrested.

This case was investigated by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Jacksonville. It was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney D. Rodney Brown.

It is another case 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.justice.gov/psc.