Greenville Man Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography Offense

A Greenville man pled guilty in federal district court on January 16, 2014, to attempt to access with intent to view visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, Stephen R. Wigginton, announced today. Terry L. Adcock, 65, Greenville, Illinois, faces a term in federal prison of not more than 10 years, a fine up to $250,000, and a term of supervised release of five years to life when he is sentenced. Sentencing is scheduled for May 16, 2014, in East St. Louis, Illinois. Adcock also agreed to forfeit the computers that contain the visual depictions. In addition, upon his release from prison, Adcock must register as a sex offender as a condition of his supervised release. Adcock is being held without bond pending sentencing.

An FBI nationwide investigation revealed IP addresses that accessed a web forum known to contain links to images and/or videos of visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. The web forum listed a detailed description of the image and/or video file that a user could link to. This investigation revealed that, between October and November 2011, an IP address assigned to Adcock tried to access the web forum on five separate occasions.

On December 18, 2012, FBI special agents spoke with Adcock at his residence about the results of the investigation. Adcock admitted that he had been searching for and viewing images of child pornography on the Internet since he bought his first computer approximately 20 years prior and that he was interested in prepubescent girls between the ages of 10 and 12. He said that, by Googling a search term commonly associated with child pornography, he would gain access to thousands of websites that contained child pornography. Adcock gave consent to the officers to search and seize, among other things, a Gateway desktop computer and a Dell Inspiron laptop computer that he used to access and view child pornography.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 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."

The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Springfield Child Exploitation Task Force (SCETF). The case is assigned to Assistant United States Attorney Angela Scott.