Few offenses are treated as seriously by police, prosecutors, and judges as sex crimes against children. Even violent crimes, in general, do not result in the same emotional determination to find, prosecute, and punish those who hurt and victimize children. This a lesson that a Wisconsin man is about to learn the hard way—so to speak—as he was recently sentenced to serve 25 years in prison for child sex trafficking.
A Series of Disturbing Events
A 36-year-old man from Rhinelander was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison last week. The man had already pleaded guilty to “sex trafficking of a child under the age of 14 years old.” According to news reports, court documents, and a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, the plea deal resulted in similar state-level charges in Marathon and Lincoln Counties being dropped.
Court documents indicate the man relied on social media and public Wi-Fi to communicate with minors, often offering money in exchange for sex acts, between 2018 and 2020. The charge to which he pled guilty, however, involved the solicitation of a 13-year-old girl in Illinois in 2019. The man reportedly drove to Illinois to have sex with the child in exchange for cash. Additional investigation found that the man performed or attempted sex acts with several other minors in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois.
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