Registered Sex Offender Sentenced to 40 Years for Producing Child Sexual Abuse Material

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - A federal judge sentenced a man with a prior child sex offense conviction to 40 years in prison yesterday for producing child sexual abuse material (CSAM), announced Russ Ferguson, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Christopher James Porter, 33, was also ordered to serve a lifetime of supervised release and to register as a sex offender.

"Mr. Porter went to extraordinary lengths to take advantage of a minor and avoid being caught. After soliciting explicit photos and videos, he traveled across the country, took her from her home and destroyed the minor's phone, engaged in sexual relations with her, and created photos and videos of his sexual abuse. He will now spend 40 years in federal prison-longer than he has been alive," said U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson.

"Porter targeted, groomed, and violated a child for his own sexual gratification. While it is difficult to understand how anyone could do this, it is the stark reality of the danger lurking online every day. We must talk to our children to prevent them from being victimized by disgusting predators like Porter," said Reid Davis the FBI Charlotte Special Agent in Charge.

According to court documents and the sentencing hearing, Porter began to communicate online with a 16-yer-old victim in May 2023. During their communications, and after the victim disclosed her age, Porter asked the minor to make and send him sexually explicit videos and photos, which the minor shared. Over the course of their communications, Porter discussed visiting the minor in Western North Carolina. At the time, Porter was in Colorado.

In October 2023, the minor left her home and met Porter, who was waiting nearby in his vehicle. Once the minor was in the car, Porter instructed her to delete her social media application from her phone. Porter drove west and near the Tennessee border, he destroyed minor's cell phone and threw it into a dumpster. In Tennessee, Porter got a hotel room, engaged in sexual activity with the minor, and made child pornography videos of her. Over the next few days, Porter and the minor continued to travel west and stopped at rest stops and parking lots to sleep along the way. Porter continued to engage in sexual activity with the minor in his car.

On October 25, 2023, officers with the Kirkwood Missouri Police Department observed Porter's vehicle parked in a parking lot. The officers approached the vehicle, made contact with Porter, and determined that he was a registered sex offender. The police also discovered that the minor who was with him in the vehicle had been reported as missing. Officers arrested Porter and seized his phone. A forensic analysis of the phone revealed that Porter had produced sexually explicit videos and images involving the minor. In an interview with law enforcement, Porter admitted that he had met the minor online and he had travelled to North Carolina from Colorado to pick her up. He further admitted that he had engaged in sexual activity with the minor.

Porter is in federal custody and will be transferred to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons upon designation to a federal facility.

In making the announcement, U.S. Attorney Ferguson thanked the FBI in Charlotte, the Monroe Police Department, Kirkwood Missouri Police Department for their investigation of the case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimlani Ford of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Charlotte prosecuted the case.

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 U.S. Attorneys' 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 https://www.justice.gov/psc.