Child Porn Possession Admitted By Fairfax Man In Guilty Plea: Court

FAIRFAX, VA — James Andrew Whitney, a 62-year-old from Fairfax, pleaded guilty in federal court on Monday to possessing and receiving child sexual abuse material, as well as obscene visual representations of the sexual abuse of children, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Since at least April 2018, Whitney used an Internet-based peer-to-peering sharing service to search for and download images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to court documents. Some of those images were of prepubescent children under 12 years old.

Whitney also admitted to creating projects as early as April 2010, in which he digitally altered images of naked children 12 and younger and placed those images around his residence, according to court documents. He then narrated a sexual encounter with himself and the minor victims depicted in the photos.

Using a file-sharing service, Whitney downloaded obscene, computer-generated images, including a scene of a child being abducted from a playground, who was then raped, according to court documents.

Whitney is due back in court on Jan. 12, 2024 for sentencing. For each of the charges to which he pleaded guilty, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 20 years, according to court documents.