An Oklahoma man was sentenced last week in federal court after pleading guilty to producing child pornography.
Todd Noble, 51, of Lindsay, pleaded guilty earlier this year to one count of producing child pornography in a case involving an Illinois girl. As partof his plea agreement in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Noble also admitted to engaging in similar conductwith two other girls. Those girls live in Oklahoma and Texas.
According to court records, Noble had been engaging in online conversations with the girls in 2014 and 2015. During this time, he convinced them to sendhim sexually explicit images and videos of themselves through online messaging and text messaging. Reports say Noble pretended to be a teenager inorder to gain the girls' trust. When one of the victims said that she was uncomfortable sending such pictures and that she had never done anythinglike that before, the defendant gave her instructionson how to make the videos more sexually explicit.
The man's actions were discovered and he was arrested in April 2015 after the parents of an 11-year-old girl in Illinois discovered sexually explicit imageson the child's iPhone.
Assistant U.S. Attorney April M. Perry said of the Noble, "Defendant preyed upon the most innocent and vulnerable of victims � children. Defendant invadedthe sanctity of these girls� homes, victimizing them when they were just yards away from their parents who believed that that their daughters weresafe."
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Andrea R. Wood sentenced Noble to 25 years in federal prison.
The United States government forbids the production of child pornography under 18 U.S. Code � 2251 - Sexual exploitation of children.Under this statute, it is a federal offense to "
employ, use, persuades induce, entice, or coerce any minor to engage in . . . any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depictionof such conduct." Violation of this law is punishable by 15 to 30 years in prison on the first offense.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice,"Convicted offenders may face harsher penalties if the offender has prior convictions or if the child pornography offense occurred in aggravated situationsdefined as (i) the images are violent, sadistic, or masochistic in nature, (ii) the minor was sexually abused, or (iii) the offender has prior convictionsfor child sexual exploitation. In these circumstances, a convicted offender may face up to life imprisonment."
