District Man Sentenced to 135 Months in Prison for Attempting to Entice a Minor and Possession of Child Pornography

WASHINGTON—Robert Henry, 22, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 11 years and three months in prison on federal charges of attempting to entice a minor and possession of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen, Jr.; Debra Evans Smith, Acting Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; and Cathy L. Lanier, Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD).

Henry pled guilty in September 2012 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He was sentenced by the Honorable Judge Beryl A. Howell. Upon completion of his prison term, he will be placed on 10 years of supervised release.

According to the government’s evidence, on March 26, 2012, an undercover officer with the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force entered a social network site. Henry contacted the undercover officer and they subsequently began communicating by online instant message, telephone calls and text messages. During their communication, Henry expressed interest in having sexual contact with an underaged child. Henry told the undercover officer that he drove to middle schools in the city and that he preferred girls between the ages of 4 and 12.

Henry further described that during one such excursion to middle schools, he was about to “snatch up one of these girls.” Over the course of the next several weeks, Henry engaged in numerous online and telephone discussions with the undercover officer, during which they discussed plans for meeting and engaging in sexual acts with the child. On May 17, 2012, Henry traveled from his house in the District of Columbia to a pre-arranged meeting place in Washington, D.C. When he arrived at the meeting place, he was arrested.

Following his arrest in May, 2012, members of law enforcement identified videos of child pornography that Henry possessed in the District of Columbia.

This case was brought as part of the Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood initiative and investigated by the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force, which includes members of the FBI’s Washington Field Office and MPD. Project Safe Childhood is 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 U.S. 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 those who exploit children, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

In announcing the guilty plea, U.S. Attorney Machen, Acting Assistant Director in Charge Smith, and Chief Lanier praised the MPD detectives and special agents of the FBI Child Exploitation Task Force. They also commended Assistant U.S. Attorney Julieanne Himelstein, who prosecuted the case.