<\/p>\n
An Erie resident has been sentenced to 12 and a half years in federal prison after being convicted of possessing child sexual abuse material, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
Chief U.S. District Judge Cathy Bissoon imposed the sentence on Michael Thomas Pritchard, 49, on July 23, to 150 months in prison, followed by 10 years of supervised release.<\/p>\n
Pritchard was found in possession of hundreds of digital images depicting minors while he was on parole for previous Pennsylvania child exploitation convictions. The evidence was presented to the court as part of the sentencing proceedings.<\/p>\n
The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Christian A. Trabold on behalf of the federal government.<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney Troy Rivetti credited the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Pennsylvania State Police, Erie Police Department, and Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for their roles in the investigation that led to the prosecution and sentencing.<\/p>\n
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to combat the exploitation and abuse of children. The program coordinates federal, state, and local law enforcement efforts to identify offenders, protect victims, and prosecute crimes involving the sexual exploitation of minors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An Erie resident has been sentenced to 12 and a half years in federal prison after being convicted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[61269,19529,136,138,137,464,107359,789],"class_list":["post-251204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-erie","tag-child-exploitation","tag-child-sexual-abuse-material","tag-erie","tag-erie-headlines","tag-erie-news","tag-federal-prison","tag-project-safe-childhood","tag-sentencing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}