KC Man Pleads Guilty, Sentenced for Child Porn

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Tammy Dickinson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri, announced that a Kansas City, Mo., man who photo-shopped images of child pornography to appear as if he was engaged in sexual activity with children pleaded guilty and was sentenced in federal court today.

Patrick O. Chapin, 68, of Kansas City, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Roseann Ketchmark and was sentenced to six years and six months in federal prison without parole.

Chapin pleaded guilty today to receiving child pornography over the Internet. On March 17, 2014, Chapin took his desktop computer and a backup external hard drive to a computer repair shop to have work performed on the devices. He requested that the computer’s internal hard drive be replaced with a new one and that data from the external backup hard drive be transferred into the new internal hard drive. The technician working on Chapin’s computer discovered what appeared to be child pornography on the external hard drive and turned the computer and hard drive over to the Kansas City Police Department.

A police detective interviewed Chapin, who said he had been looking at child pornography for the past 14 years. A recurring theme in the images he possessed was the graphic depiction of the rape and sodomy of pubescent and prepubescent girls by adult men. Chapin admitted that his child pornography collection included images of bondage and bestiality.

Investigators found 2,131 photos and 101 videos of child pornography on Chapin’s devices. They also found several files created by Chapin using Photoshop Deluxe, an image-editing software. These files contained images of Chapin that were combined or layered with existing pornographic images of 13-to-14-year-old children downloaded from the Internet. Chapin thus created final images that appeared to depict himself engaged in illegal sexual activity with these child victims.

This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney David Luna. It was investigated by the FBI and the Kansas City, Mo., Police Department.

Project Safe Childhood

This 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 . For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab "resources."