CALIFORNIA
A federal judge sentenced a Colorado man to life in prison for kidnapping a toddler and producing child pornography, officials said.
Shawn McCormack, 31, of Colorado Springs, Colorado, was found guilty in April by a federal jury of four counts of sexual exploitation of a child and two counts of kidnapping.
Senior U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii sentenced McCormack on Tuesday.
“McCormack’s acts were both vile and heart-breaking, and they may have continued undetected for years but for the imaginative, dogged, and painstaking work of the investigators who brought him to justice,” said U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner. “We are gratified by the sentence McCormack received today, which is both severe and just, and while the harm that he inflicted cannot be undone, we can be assured that he will not be able to inflict further harm upon our most vulnerable.”
During the four-day trial, the evidence indicated the following happened:
- McCormack, pretending to be a friend, traveled to the child’s family’s residence in Bakersfield, California.
- He stayed there as an overnight guest on multiple occasions.
- During several of the overnight stays, in the middle of the night, McCormack snuck the couple’s toddler out of the house and recorded his sexual abuse of the toddler in a nearby motel, outdoors and in his truck.
- McCormack then returned the toddler to the house before the parents awoke.
- McCormack distributed the images and videos of his abuse to others online, including an undercover officer with the Toronto Police Services.
Homeland Security Investigations agents in Boston found images and recordings distributed by McCormack on a separate defendant’s computer in Massachusetts, officials stated.
The agents were able to identify the date, time and hotel room where one of the videos had been produced.
When agents visited that hotel, they learned that McCormack had rented that hotel room on the night when the recording was created, according to authorities.
During the investigation, agents uncovered evidence that McCormack had recorded his abuse of both of the couple’s children.
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.