Tuesday, December 13, 2016

North Carolina man charged with molesting, videoing 11-year-old Joplin girl

(From the U. S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri)

A North Carolina man has been charged in federal court with sexually assaulting a Joplin, Mo., area child in order to produce child pornography.

David Lee Perkins, 33, of North Carolina, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Springfield, Mo., on Monday, Dec. 12, 2016. Perkins remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing on Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016.

According to an affidavit filed in support of the federal criminal complaint, police officers were dispatched to a Joplin hotel where Perkins was staying on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2016. Officers met a woman at the hotel who showed them an iPad that contained videos of Perkins molesting an 11-year-old victim, identified in court documents as “Jane Doe.” She told officers that she looked through the iPad while Perkins was out in the parking lot with Jane Doe and another minor, and discovered three videos of Perkins sexually abusing Jane Doe.

Officers entered Perkins’s hotel room and placed Perkins under arrest for child molestation. In an interview the following day, the affidavit says, Perkins told an officer that he had been sexually abusing Jane Doe for approximately one year, in various hotels and motels in Joplin. Perkins stated he used his iPad and iPhone to photograph and create videos of the sexual abuse.

According to the affidavit, investigators found three videos on Perkins’s iPad that depict Perkins engaged in sexually explicit conduct with Jane Doe.

This case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Ami Harshad Miller. It was investigated by the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force, the Joplin, Mo., Police Department and the FBI.

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