Washington, DC - A Fairfax, Virginia man was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison for downloading child pornography, followed by a lifetime term of supervised release, Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia and Assistant Director in Charge Nancy McNamara of the FBI’s Washington Field Office announced.
Christopher James Tator, 31, a newspaper carrier, was sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III of the Eastern District of Virginia. In August, Tator pleaded guilty to one count of receipt of child pornography by a person with a prior conviction relating to aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor.
According to court documents, Tator was discovered by the FBI making child pornography files available over an Internet file-sharing network. A computer forensic examination of devices seized from Tator’s residence during a search warrant revealed that he had used a computer to download child pornography videos from a Dropbox cloud storage account. Tator’s devices also contained hundreds of thumbnail images of children being sexually abused, many of which depicted the sexual abuse of infants. Tator is a registered sex offender as a result of a 2010 Prince William County conviction of attempting to take indecent liberties with children.
The case was investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office’s Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force, with assistance from the High Technology Investigative Unit (HTIU) of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS). CEOS Trial Attorney Kyle P. Reynolds prosecuted the case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.