U.S. District Court<\/a> to 25 years in prison and lifetime supervised release for distribution of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nFlores pleaded guilty in November 2011.\u00a0 Flores was previously convicted in King County Superior Court in 1997 of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, for the molestation of two young girls.\u00a0 U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones said Flores had engaged in \u201csexual terrorism\u201d against his young victims.\u00a0 \u201cNo matter what sentence I impose,\u201d the judge told Flores, \u201cit will pale in comparison to the life of pain you imposed on your young victims.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
According to the plea agreement, Flores was employed by the Seattle Times as a clerk in the finance department.\u00a0 Flores admitted that in February and March 2011, while at work, he downloaded child pornography onto his work computer.\u00a0 Flores transferred the child pornography to an external thumb drive and later distributed the child pornography using his Yahoo Flickr account.\u00a0 Law enforcement found about 6,800 images and videos on the thumb drive.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Flores was terminated by the Seattle Times shortly after detectives followed up on information from the internet service provider about the explicit materials downloaded to Flores\u2019 work computer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis investigation revealed what we find all too often in these cases, that child pornography suspects are often involved in the actual sexual abuse of children.\u201d said Brad Bench, acting special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Seattle. \u201cChildren have the right to be safe from predators. That\u2019s why we will continue to vigorously investigate these cases and seek justice for the victims.\u201d Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of 27 years in prison.\u00a0 \u201cThere is an overriding need to protect the public in this case.\u00a0 He is a dangerous man, and continues to harbor deviant fantasies involving the sexual exploitation of children.\u00a0 There is no reason to believe he will ever stop preying on children if he is released.\u00a0 Similarly, deterrence is an important factor here — not only for this defendant, but for the public at large, and any other individual who might be tempted to sexually abuse children,\u201d prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Flores must register as a sex offender when released from prison.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorneys\u2019 Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (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. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The case was investigated by the Seattle Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s Homeland Security Investigations (ICE-HSI).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Jerrod Patterson.\u00a0 Patterson coordinates Project Safe Childhood for the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Richard Flores, 58, of Seattle was sentenced today in U.S. District Court to 25 years in prison and lifetime supervised release for distribution of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6192\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6192"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}