Jonesboro man gets 22 years for advertising child pornography online
A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced a Jonesboro man to nearly 22 years in federal prison, with no parole, for advertising sexually explicit images of children on the Internet.
Steven Thorpe, 44, pleaded guilty Feb. 9, several days before his scheduled jury trial, to the advertising charge, which accused him of seeking and offering child pornography online on March 11, 2013. On Aug. 15, 2016, he pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing child pornography in connection with illegal images found in his possession on Oct. 23, 2014.
Thorpe faced between 15 and 30 years in prison, partly because of sentencing enhancements that applied because children younger than 12 were pictured; the images portrayed sadistic, masochistic or violent conduct; he had more than 600 images of child pornography; and he had a pattern of activity involving the sexual exploitation of minors.
Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller sentenced Thorpe to 262 months, or 21.8 years, and ordered him to remain on supervised release for the rest of his life after he is released from prison. Conditions of his supervised release include registering as a sex offender and having no contact with anyone younger than 18.
According to court documents, the Jonesboro Police Department received a sexual-assault complaint against Thorpe on July 8, 2014, after a girl told her grandmother that
Thorpe, whom she knew, had touched her inappropriately on several occasions when her mother wasn’t around.
When detectives arrested Thorpe on a warrant, he claimed not to have a phone. But someone who knew Thorpe told police he had seen “several sexually explicit photographs” of the girl on Thorpe’s phone. That man also gave police a SIM — subscriber identity module — card he had removed from Thorpe’s phone. Thorpe’s laptop also was given to police.
Officers obtained a search warrant to examine the phone, and a forensic evaluation revealed more than 20,000 images of child pornography on it, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Agents of the U.S. Secret Service then obtained a search warrant for the laptop, finding more than 1,400 images of child pornography.
“In addition to the photos of children being sexually abused, agents also discovered that Thorpe had accessed online chat-rooms through a computer program called Gigatribe,” acting U.S. Attorney Pat Harris said in a news release after Thorpe’s sentencing.
“In these chats,” Harris said, “Thorpe advertised to other users that he had child pornography available, including ‘doctor/patient, dad/ son, hidden cams, massage,’ and ‘getting caught, locker/ school rooms, and public videos.’ Thorpe would then send other users a link to a folder containing his child pornography along with his password, ‘boys777.’”
Harris said Thorpe is still facing multiple state charges, including sexual-assault and additional child-pornography charges in Craighead County. Thorpe’s federal plea agreement says the U.S. attorney’s office won’t object to him serving any state and federal sentences concurrently.
The case was prosecuted by assistant U.S. Attorneys Allison Bragg and Kristin Bryant. Thorpe was represented by Lisa Peters of the federal public defender’s office.