DC Man Sentenced To Federal Prison For Sexual Abusing Toddler & Infant

Sunday, October 6, 2024, 12:15 P.M. ET. 2 Minute Read, By Art Fletcher: Englebrook Independent News,

WASHINGTON, DC.- On Friday, a 34-year-old Washington, D.C., man was sentenced to over a half-century in federal for sexually abusing three young children, including an eight-month infant, and filming the abuse and sharing the digital images online.

     On Friday, October 4, 2024, Matthew Stitt Johnson, 43, of Washington, D.C., appeared in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Jia M. Cobb to 630 months in federal prison on his previously entered guilty pleas.

Johnson Pleads Guilty To Charges

     According to U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, on August 29, 2022, Johnson appeared before Judge Cobb and pleaded guilty to two counts of Sexual Exploitation of a Minor; and one count of second-degree Child Sexual Abuse with Aggravating Circumstances for Abusing Three Minor Children. During Friday’s hearing, Judge Cobb also ordered Johnson to register as a sex offender in the national database.

According To Documents Filed With The Court

     According to documents filed in the court, Johnson sexually abused three children, an eight-year-old, a five-year-old, and an eight-month-old infant, between 2015 through 2020. During the sexual abuse, Johnson took videos of his abuse of the five-year-old and the eight-month-old infant.

     While the five-year-old and her sister reported the abuse to their mother, the children’s mother failed to notify law enforcement about Johnson’s activities.

     In May 2021, Police officials received a tip that Johnson was downloading child pornography from a cloud-based service. Following receiving the tip, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies executed a court-authorized search warrant on Johnson’s home. During the search, investigators uncovered videos depicting the sexual abuse of the 5-year-old and the eight-month-old infant on Johnson’s cell phone, which also contained 13,000 digital images of child pornography.

     Further investigation discovered that Johnson distributed the sexual abuse of children in internet forums dedicated to trading child sexual abuse material, mainly trading digital images and videos depicting rape and torture of infants and toddlers, and actively sought out and distributed other child pornography images over two years.

     The case was investigated by the FBI Washington Field Office Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force and with assistance from the Metropolitan Police Department’s Narcotics and Special Investigations Division and was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the U.S. Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of sexual exploitation and abuse of children.