A Utah man was sentenced Monday to 144 months in federal prison and 10 years of supervised release after he pleaded guilty to receiving child pornography in November 2017.
41-year-old Robert Edwin Francis admitted guilt as part of a plea agreement said he was guilty of requesting sexually explicit images from a Yahoo account. "I received images in the form of live video chat depicting a man sexually abusing a child. I admit that I engaged in sexually explicit conduct involving children via an online social network," his statement said.
The pedophile also admitted to possessing at least 150 but not more than 300 images of child pornography. "I know that these images transferred across state lines because they were transported via the Internet," his statement continued.
Francis was charged in the Fourth Judicial District Court of Utah with two counts of aggravated sexual abuse of a child, as well as two counts of forcible sexual abuse after abusing a family member.
The victim claimed Francis abused her and touched her inappropriately while giving her "massage". In return for accepting the plea agreement and admitted guilt on the previous charges, the two counts of forcible sexual abuse were dropped as well as an additional count of aggravated sexual abuse of a child.
The Utah Office of the Attorney General says the case against Francis stemmed from another investigation of Dr. Nathan Ward. Ward was charged with 11 felonies in Utah that included aggravated sexual child abuse and sexual exploitation of a minor.
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