Father raped baby daughter and posted footage on dark web
WARNING - GRAPHIC CONTENT:
A former paramedic has been sentenced to 70 years in prison for repeatedly raping his one-year-old daughter and posting the footage of his sickening crimes to the dark web.
Florida father-of-two, James Lockhart, 31, made four videos of himself violently sexually abusing his own infant child between March 2016 and February 2018.
Lockhart had then distributed the footage on a dark web forum, using the monikers “StrangeWood” and “HardWood”, court documents said.
“This deviant committed the most horrible atrocities imaginable to a one-year-old child,” a US special agent in charge of the case said.
Following a search of Lockhart’s residence, in addition to the videos he made himself, investigators from the Department of Homeland Security also found 43 videos depicting child pornography and at least 4,000 images of child pornography.
Authorities said the offender’s child pornography collection included “infants and sadomasochistic and violent conduct”.
During the search of his home, authorities were able to confirm the identifies of both Lockhart and his victim after showing a censored version of the video he made to his wife — who was also the mother of the infant victim, Newsweek reported.
Court documents also revealed the offender had bragged of sexually abusing a second one-year-old child.
In addition to the US Department of Justice’s Project Safe Childhood initiative, the investigation was also given assistance by the Queensland Police – as part of the project’s international child protective operations.
Lockhart, who worked at Paramedics Logistics Florida from 2012 to October 2018, pled guilty to charges of producing, distributing and possessing child pornography in March.
On Thursday (local time) he was sentenced to 70 years in federal jail, the statutory maximum penalty.
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