Chief United States District Judge James C. Dever, III sentenced Stephen Glenn Batts Batts, 48, of Raleigh, North Carolina, to 12 year of federal imprisonment followed by 10 years of supervised release after he pled guilty to nine counts of Receipt of Child Pornography and one-count of Possession of Child Pornography.

 

In December 2016, a detective with the Cary Police Department, conducted an online investigation looking for offenders sharing child pornography. The investigation focused on an Internet Protocol (IP) because it was sharing known images of child pornography. The detective located files being shared by this IP address. Officers connected to the target computer and downloaded 735 files. A review of those files showed that 598 were child pornography while the other were child erotic in nature but not sexual conduct. The majority of the 598 files downloaded by investigators were of sexual acts with infants, toddlers, and children under 6 years old. This information was relayed to Homeland Security Investigations in Raleigh for further investigation. Further along in the investigation, agents identified the address associated with that IP address and obtained a search warrant. 

 

On February 1, 2017, a search warrant was executed by agents at Batts' residence. During their search, investigators found several computer devices belonging to Batts.

 

He first denied but later admitted that he searched and downloaded child pornography from his laptop computers. Batts also said he also viewed child pornography in webinars. He acknowledged that he received child pornography over the internet.

 

A complete forensics examination of the files obtained from Batts’ computer devices revealed approximately 962 videos and 39,078 images of child pornography. A review of the hard drive included numerous known internet search terms associated with child pornography.

 

This case was part of the Project Safe Childhood initiative, a national program aimed at ensuring that criminals exploiting children are effectively prosecuted by making full use of all available law enforcement resources at every level. For more information about this important national project, Project Safe Childhood, go to www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

 

The Cary Police Department and Homeland Security Investigations conducted the criminal investigation of this case. Assistant United States Attorney James C. Kurosad handled the prosecution of this case for the United States.