An Oklahoma City day care employee and babysitter has pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of manufacturing and distributing child pornography.
The case against Jason Marc Janatsch, 26, began in September 2015. Undercover agents with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) downloaded child pornographyvia the smartphone app Kik from a user in Christchurch, New Zealand. Law enforcement agents in New Zealand identified the man and discovered that hehad used the app to exchange child pornography a user in the United States operating under the screen name "TheLoveroftheLittle."
HSI agents traced the Kik screen name to Janatsch, and Oklahoma City day care worker and "freelance babysitter," according to his profile on sitter.com.
Investigators discovered that Janatsch had produced the child pornography by using his iPhone to take sexually explicit pictures of a 2-year-old girl hewas babysitting.
Janatsch was indicted by a Federal grand jury in January. Yesterday, he admitted in federal court that on June 11, 2015, he had taken pictures of the toddlerengaged in sexual conduct and sent them to the Kik user in New Zealand. In exchange, he received pornographic images of children from the New Zealanduser.
United States District Judge Stephen P. Friot accepted the defendant's guilty plea, and sentencing will take place in approximately 90 days. For convictionof a federal charge of producing child pornography, Janatsch faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison. He faces the possibility ofa maximum of 30 years in federal prison.
The federal law against production of child pornography is found in 18 U.S. Code � 2251 - Sexual exploitation of children.Under this law, anyone who "employs, uses, persuades, induces, entices, or coerces any minor to engage in, or who has a minor assist any other personto engage in" sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction is guilty of a felony punishable by 15 to 30 years in prison.This includes transporting a minor for the purpose of engaging in child pornography, and it includes parents who allow their minor children to engagein sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing visual depictions or who permit their minor children to be used in such a manner.
Under federal law, a minor is considered to be any person under the age of 18. Therefore, in Oklahoma, a minor aged 16 or 17 could, in most cases, legallyconsent to sexual intercourse or sexual activity. However, creating a sexually explicit visual depiction--whether through sexting nude or partiallynude images of oneself or taking video of a sexual encounter--would amount to producing child pornography.
