A 39-year-old Roswell man was sentenced to 17 years in prison for sex crimes against a 13-year-old girl that occurred in 2012.
Derrick Hunt has been sentenced for producing child pornography.
Hunt was on the run from law enforcement since bonding out of jail. He was captured in 2019.
According to prosecutors, Hunt concealed a 13-year-old girl at his apartment for three weeks in the summer of 2012 and produced videos of his sex acts with her.
“Hunt assaulted a vulnerable young girl by plying her with drugs and alcohol in order to sexually abuse her,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan. “Sexual predators use every opportunity, including leveraging social media platforms, to lure children into these kinds of exploitive situations. The experience of this victim and her family is the kind of nightmare scenario for unsuspecting parents that we encourage citizens to try to avoid through vigilant monitoring of their children’s social media activities.”
According Buchanan, the charges and other information presented in court, on June 18, 2012, Hunt saw a Facebook posting from a 13-year-old girl saying that she wanted to run away from her family’s home. Hunt knew that she was 13 years old, but he still agreed to pick her up. He took her to his apartment in Roswell and gave her alcohol, marijuana and opioids.
Over the next several weeks, prosecutors say Hunt engaged in numerous sex acts with the girl, many of them while she was impaired from alcohol or drugs.
All of the sex acts occurred in Hunt’s living room area where he positioned a camera to record his sex acts with the child. On July 7, 2012, Hunt arranged for the girl’s father to pick her up at a restaurant.
Hunt was unaware that the child’s father had arranged for the police to be present at the meeting location. Hunt was arrested when he dropped off the victim at approximately 2:30 a.m.
Fulton County charged Hunt locally with child molestation offenses, but he was released on bond and fled the state.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office then obtained an arrest warrant for Hunt for the federal offense of production of child pornography via a criminal complaint. He was arrested under an alias in Las Vegas, Nevada, on August 30, 2019.
“Predators like Hunt have no place in civilized society. Their victims, in this case a 13-year-old girl, will likely never fully recover from the abuse they endured,” said Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta. “Our warning to predators is that the FBI will go to great lengths to protect our most vulnerable citizens from those who seek to manipulate and do them harm.”
Hunt was sentenced to 17 years and six months in prison to be followed by supervised release for life. Hunt was convicted on these charges on May 16, after he pleaded guilty.
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