BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- A detail pulled five years ago by an investigator in France from a notorious series of obscene Internet photographs resulted in the imposition Tuesday of the most severe sentence ever in a child pornography prosecution in Connecticut, and one of the longest in the U.S.
A federal judge sentenced truck driver William Oehne, who is 50 years old, to 45 years in prison for taking pornographic photographs of the 9-year old daughter of a former girlfriend and using the Internet to distribute the images to pedophiles around the world.
U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall sentenced Oehne to 30 years for the production of child pornography and a consecutive 15 years for distribution of child pornography.
In their argument for a severe sentence, federal prosecutors attacked the insidious nature of child pornography in the Internet age, describing it as a crime that turns children, such as the subject of Oehne's abuse, into permanent victims as exploitive images of them are traded repeatedly among pedophiles around the world.
"She will be compelled to endure the continual world-wide circulation and possession of the abusive images by an ever-increasing number of offenders and will be powerless to control their dissemination," Assistant U.S. Attorney Krishna R. Patel wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
In fact, the series of photographs that Oehne uploaded to the Internet have turned up in digital files seized from sexual offenders around the world.
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