A Liberty County man has been sentenced to more than a decade in federal prison after admitting he persuaded children to send him sexual images and photos.
Jasiri Hutchison, 20, of Hinesville, Ga., was sentenced to 180 months in prison after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court to Production of Child Pornography and Possession of Child Pornography, said David H. Estes, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia. The charges were brought in both the Southern District of Georgia and the Middle District of Georgia, and U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker also ordered Hutchison to register as a sex offender and to serve 15 years of supervised release after completion of his prison term.
There is no parole in the federal system.
“Jasari Hutchison’s predatory behavior shockingly represents every parent’s nightmare,” said U.S. Attorney David H. Estes. “By systematically targeting and exploiting young children and coercing them to provide illicit images of themselves, he robbed numerous victims of their trust and innocence and rightly is being held accountable.”
As described in court documents and testimony, as early as April 2019 through December 2020, Hutchison typically portrayed himself as a young girl in online interactions with children via various messaging applications, at first persuading those children to send innocuous photos of themselves and later threatening to share those photos with their friends unless the victim sent increasingly sexualized images or videos of themselves and/or siblings. In pleading guilty to the charges, Hutchison admitted possessing more than 600 sexually explicit images of children.
“Hutchinson’s days of preying upon innocent children, creating lifelong trauma are over thanks to the great work done by the agents, officers and our law enforcement partners,” said Special Agent in Charge Katrina W. Berger, who oversees Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) operations in Georgia and Alabama. “Cases like this highlight the need for everyone to monitor what our children do and who they interact with online.”
Anyone with information on suspected child sexual exploitation can contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-843-5678, or https://report.cybertip.org/.
The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and prosecuted for the United States by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jennifer J. Kirkland and Project Safe Childhood Coordinator Tara M. Lyons, with assistance from Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Sue Robichaux from the Asset Recovery Unit.