Posted on: Saturday, March 12, 2005
Man gets 15 years in child sex, porn case
By Ken Kobayashi
Advertiser Courts Writer
A 35-year-old man has been sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for sexually abusing a minor, advertising child pornography and witness tampering.
Jesus Norberto Evans-Martinez, a former Schofield Barracks soldier, was sentenced Thursday by U. S. District Judge David Ezra, who called the offenses "unspeakable crimes" and said Evans-Martinez's conduct was reprehensible.
Ezra said he would have imposed a 20-year term, but gave Evans-Martinez credit for providing the information to prosecutors.
Evans-Martinez was arrested in March 2003 following an FBI investigation prompted by a complaint from an e-mail service in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to Assistant U. S. Attorney Larry Tong, who handled the prosecution. The complaint alleged that an e-group provided by an Internet server was being used to transmit and share child pornography.
Investigators searched Evans-Martinez's home. Agents recovered computers and storage media that contained images of children, including images of Evans-Martinez engaged in sex acts with girls, prosecutors said.
He was charged with having inappropriate contact with two girls and took pictures of some of the activity, they said.
Evans-Martinez pleaded guilty in January. In his plea agreement, Martinez admitted sending an e-mail that included child pornography to various e-groups. He also moderated a new group for sharing child pornography from September 2002 to February 2003, prosecutors said.
After his arrest and while being held at the Federal Detention Center, Evans-Martinez called someone, persuading that person to destroy evidence, including a computer hard drive, that he knew contained child pornography, prosecutors said.
But federal prosecutors said Evans-Martinez gave FBI permission to use his screen name and password to access the e-group that he moderated. FBI agents were able to identify others who posted and downloaded pictures of kids engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
As a result of the investigation, seven people on the Mainland were arrested and convicted of offenses against children, Tong said.
Reach Ken Kobayashi at 525-8030 or kkobayashi@honoluluadvertiser.com.
