Montana sex offender gets 15 years

66-year-old arrested in state park with child-porn cache

A registered sex offender from Montana who statepark officers found in Nevada County in September 2012 with about 60 child-pornography videos in his car was sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison.

Conner Eldridge, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Arkansas, said Friday that John Malcolm Nealy, 66, received the lengthy sentence, for which parole isn’t available and which is to be followed by a lifetime on probation, for transporting child pornography across state lines.

Nealy, of Florence, Mont., was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes in a Texarkana courtroom in connection with his guilty plea April 15.

Officers with the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism found Nealy in the White Oak State Park in rural Nevada County with a stolen

license plate on his vehicle. The officers discovered he was a registered sex offender who was wanted by federal marshals on charges of violating his probation on a previous conviction in Montana for possessing child pornography.

The officers arrested Nealy and searched his vehicle, finding computer equipment and memory cards containing about 60 videos of child pornography, some of which portrayed sadistic, masochistic or otherwise violent conduct, Eldridge said in a news release.

Eldridge said Nealy later admitted to agents with the federal Homeland Security Investigations agency that he fled Montana with the videos to avoid arrest on probation violations stemming from his earlier federal conviction.

Eldridge called the case “extremely disturbing,” noting Nealy’s earlier conviction.

“Instead of being rehabilitated or learning a lesson from his prior conviction, he chose to continue his illicit behavior, progressing into viewing images that were even more disturbing and more violent,” Eldridge said.

The prosecutor said that “We will continue to work aggressively to prosecute these types of cases to the fullest extent of the law for the sake of these innocent children,” who, he noted, “will forever be victimized by these images.”

Eldridge said the case against Nealy, which was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matt Quinn, was brought as part of the Project Safe Childhood nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. The U.S. Department of Justice started the initiative in May 2006. It utilizes federal, state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute people who exploit children on the Internet, and to identify and rescue victims.