Jason Collins, 37, of Soddy Daisy, was sentenced by the Honorable Harry S. Mattice, U.S. District Judge, to serve 85 months in prison, followed by a 15-year term of supervised release. Collins pleaded guilty in August 2015 to receipt of child pornography. Restitution was also ordered to some of his victims.
The indictment and subsequent conviction of Collins was the result of a year-long investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Bradley County Sheriff’s Department, and Harriman Police Department. The investigation began when a Harriman Police detective was able to download images and videos from a peer-to-peer internet account belonging to Collins on three different dates over the course of three months. These images and videos were of minors engaging in sexual activity. The FBI, along with an Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Officer from the Bradley County Sheriff’s Department, discovered that Collins had more than 80,000 images and 300 videos on his computer and other electronic storage media. The images and videos were compared with those from known victims through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) database. The NCMEC database found that the images belonged to 222 known victim series and the videos belonged to 90 known victim series.
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, 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.