A Rogersville man was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison Friday for creating and sharing child pornography on Snapchat.
Jake Ethan Patterson, 28, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a child.
In the plea agreement, Patterson admitted to using two female child victims ages 3-5 to produce child pornography. Patterson admitted to taking numerous photos and at least one video of the victims’ exposed genitalia. In some of the images, the victim was on his lap and/or Patterson was touching the child.
Patterson then shared those images and videos via Snapchat with someone in Canada named Daniel Bergsma and had explicit conversations with Bergsma about the two victims.
At the sentencing hearing, Patterson cried as he read from a letter apologizing to everyone impacted by his crimes, especially the victims.
“Rightfully I deserve to be punished,” Patterson said. “The weight of my sin will forever be on my heart.”
He asked Chief Judge Beth Phillips if he could be sent to a prison that has a sex offender program.
“I want to grow and heal as much as I possibly can,” he said. “I want to be an example to other sex offenders that you can heal.”
Investigation began in Canada
The investigation began in June of 2021 when Canadian law enforcement authorities seized two cell phones belonging to Bergsma, a Canadian citizen. Investigators found the Snapchat conversations with Patterson.
Snapchat is a social media platform in which videos and photos automatically disappear after a single viewing. However, Snapchat will work with law enforcement on these types of investigations. During the Canadian investigation, Snapchat submitted a cyber tip in July of 2021 alleging that Patterson had uploaded a child pornography file.
Prosecutor Stephanie Wan said she understood Patterson’s own childhood trauma is a mitigating factor in the case and that is the reason Wan didn’t ask for more than 25 years in prison.
“I want to be clear,” Wan said. “His trauma did not make him exploit these children.”
Wan added that she hopes the victims don’t remember the abuse and that the images don’t go beyond the Canadian suspect.
“We are lucky law enforcement caught him when they did,” Wan said, “because he was not on our radar until the Canadian suspect was caught.”
Patterson’s defense attorney Erica Mynarich spoke about her client’s remorse, saying that he initially didn’t want to take the plea deal because he felt he deserved more prison time.
Mynarich also said she believes in some ways the young age of the victims can be viewed as a mitigating factor because maybe they won’t remember. She also said the fact that there was “no rape, no sodomy, no actual sex” should be viewed as mitigating factors.
Judge hopes images are not still circulating
Judge Phillips disagreed with Mynarich about the victims’ ages being a mitigator.
“I find that a little difficult to swallow,” Phillips said.
Phillips agreed with Wan’s recommendation of 25 years for each count to run concurrently followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
“Time will tell if these images will make it to the world wide web,” Phillips said.
