A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a 51-year-old Northern California man to 27 years in prison for the sexual exploitation of an autistic child three years ago.
Brent Hooton of Marysville has been convicted of sexual exploitation of a child and distribution of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento announced in a press release.
Federal prosecutors said Hooton produced three images in May 2021 of “a severely autistic child” under the age of 12 engaging in sexually explicit conduct.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Hooton shared these explicit images with an undercover FBI agent via the Kik Messenger app.
Prosecutors say FBI agents executed a search warrant, examined Hooton’s cellphone and discovered that Hooton had sent sexually explicit images of the child to at least six other Kik users, along with at least four images of other children engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
This case was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse.
