United States Attorney Anne M. Tompkins
Western District of North Carolina
CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A Catawba County man was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Charlotte to 420 months in federal prison and a lifetime of supervised release for producing child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney Anne M. Tompkins of the Western District of North Carolina.
U.S. Attorney Tompkins is joined in making today’s announcement by Greg McLeod, Director of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (NC SBI); Chief Donald G. Brown, II of the Newton Police Department, and Chief Rodney D. Monroe of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD).
In May 2011, a federal grand jury indicted Bruce Leroy Donald, Jr., 41, of Newton, N.C. on one count of production of child pornography, one count of a felony offense involving a minor committed by a registered sex offender and one count of possession of child pornography. According to the criminal indictment, from 2007 to 2008 the defendant did employ, use, persuade, induce, entice, and coerce a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct and knowingly possessed computer hard drives containing such visual depictions.
Based on filed documents and information brought out in court proceedings, Donald had sexually abused a minor male repeatedly between 2007 and 2008 and had photographed some of the abuse. The defendant’s conduct came to the attention of law enforcement in 2009 when the Newton Police Department was investigating Donald for unrelated larcenies. The Newton PD, working with CMPD and NC SBI, discovered Donald possessed hundreds of images of child pornography. Law enforcement officers were able to identify one of the children in the images as a local minor. At the time of the offense, Donald was a registered sex offender.
In October 2011, the defendant pleaded guilty to the child pornography production and possession charges. He has been in local federal custody since May 2011. Upon designation of a federal facility, Donald will be transferred to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Federal sentences are served without the possibility of parole.
This case was investigated by Newton Police Department, CMPD and the NC SBI. The prosecution for the government was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Cortney Escaravage of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s 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.projectsafechildhood.gov.
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