Download Child Porn

December 6, 2009

Man Downloads Child Porn “Accidentally,” Faces Up To 20 Years in Prison

Downloading child pornography is not a crime to be taken lightly. While we’ve all seen the To Catch a Predator episodes, it may come as shock to find out that the mere presence of child pornography on your computer’s hard drive is enough to send you to prison for 20 years.

Matthew White of Sacramento is learning this lesson the hard way. The 22 year-old man is facing hard time for downloading child porn, “accidentally.”


White claims that after using Limewire to download “College Girls Gone Wild,” he discovered that inappropriate images of children were also downloaded. Upon the discovery, White claims the photos were immediately deleted.

Now White faces up to 20 years in prison and plans to plead guilty, on the advice of his lawyer, in the hopes of getting a 3.5 year sentence instead (though he will have to register as a sex offender when released).

CBS in Sacramento covered the story, and White’s story is as follows:

“It didn’t appeal to me,” he said. “I was looking for women my age, so I just wanted to download ‘College Girls Gone Wild’ and accidentally downloaded underage pornography.”

About a year later, FBI agents showed up at his family’s home. The family agreed to let agents examine the computer, and at first, they couldn’t find anything.

Investigators later were able to recover the deleted images from deep within the hard drive.

“I asked them, ‘Where did you get that? I don’t remember that.’ I asked them, ‘Could I access that if I wanted to?’” Matt said. “They said no.”

It appears as if the law has no lenience for accidents when it comes to child porn. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, the only option you have to avoid White’s fate is to report the incident to the authorities immediately.