A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a 51-year-old Northern California man to 27 years in prison for sexually exploiting an autistic child three years ago.
Brent Hooton of Marysville was convicted of sexual exploitation of a child and distribution of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Sacramento announced in a news release.
Federal prosecutors said Hooton in May 2021 produced three images of “a severely autistic child” younger than 12 years old engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Hooton shared these explicit images on the Kik Messenger app with an undercover FBI agent, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Prosecutors said FBI agents served a search warrant, examined Hooton’s cellphone and discovered that Hooton 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.
