North Fairfax News

Assistant Dean of Students at Local College Sentenced for Child Pornography

 A Virginia Beach man was sentenced yesterday to 6 years in prison for receiving images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

According to court documents, Robert Morris, 37, used a file-sharing program to provide more than 500 files depicting the sexual abuse of minors—including children as young as infants—to detectives in the Virginia Beach Police Department in December 2021. Detectives obtained a search warrant for his home, where they seized a laptop computer containing additional files depicting the sexual abuse of minors, which had been obtained from social messaging applications. At the time of his arrest, Morris was an assistant dean of students and systems administrator at Wave Leadership College, a religious institution in Virginia Beach. He was previously administratively separated from the U.S. Navy for misconduct, including sexual harassment.

Jessica D. Aber, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Derek W. Gordon, Acting Special Agent in Charge of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI); and Paul Neudigate, Chief of Virginia Beach Police, made the announcement after sentencing by U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wilson Hanes.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Rebecca Gantt prosecuted the case.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to better locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc

In 2021, EDVA launched “UnMasked,” a community-based educational outreach and prevention program in Virginia dedicated to raising awareness and educating the community about the prevalence of online sexual exploitation involving children and young adults. UnMasked is a multi-disciplinary partnership of local, state, federal, and non-profit stakeholders. The core curriculum is provided by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) NetSmartz program. To report an incident involving online sexual exploitation, call 1-800-843-5678 or submit a report at report.cybertip.org. To request an UnMasked event at your school or organization, please contact EDVA’s Community Outreach Coordinator at USAVAE-UnMasked@usdoj.gov.

Original source can be found here