A North Carolina man was sentenced to a record prison term of 55 years for livestreaming sex abuse of Filipino children.
Jake Ross was sentenced for paying a mother in the Philippines to sexually abuse her children over livestream and the 47-year-old man from McDowell County received the longest sentence ever given in a child pornography case by the federal courts in the Asheville division of the Western District of North Carolina.
Chief U.S. District Judge Martin Reidinger also added a lifetime of court supervision if Ross were to outlive his sentence while U.S. lawyer Dena King stated Ross’ punishment “reflects the depravity of his actions.”
Ross was arrested in July 2020 for his involvement as a dealer in “webcam sex tourism” wherein “pornography from mostly from developing countries is live-streamed on social media platforms around the globe.”
The federal investigators found 28 pornographic screenshots from Ross’ WhatsApp video chats with the Filipino mother on his phone while screen grabs of other livestreamed sex abuse of children were also uncovered from Ross’ Google accounts.
King said that the “crimes that prey on our children sicken me.”
