COLUMBUS, Ohio – A western Ohio man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to secretly videotaping young girls in a bathroom at his home and trading the images for other online child pornography.
Mickell Close 32, of Quincy, faces court supervision for 20 years after he’s released from prison, and will have monitoring software on any computer he owns or uses.
“Once images of exploitation are on the internet, they never go away “This adds to the indignity and humiliation the victims are already facing,” U.S. Attorney Carter Stewart said in announcing the sentence handed down by federal judge Edmund Sargus Thursday
The sentence also requires Close to register as a sex offender anywhere he works, lives or goes to school.
Federal authorities arrested Close in November as part of a nationwide child pornography sweep that rescued dozens of victims of child exploitation.
Investigators say numerous images of young girls in sexually explicit activity or bondage were found on Close’s computers.
Close pleaded guilty on Jan. 17 to one count of using minors to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of the conduct.
According to a statement read by a Homeland Security Investigations agent during the plea hearing, law enforcement officials patrolling the internet in June 2012 identified an email account connected to sharing child pornography. Investigators traced the account to Close.
Further investigation found that Close had placed cameras in his house to surreptitiously record video of three minor females as young as three years old as they were nude in the bathroom.
He created hundreds of videos and thousands of still images of the victims and posted and traded the photos and videos by email and the internet in exchange for images and videos of child pornography.