Man Gets 35 Years For Molesting Girl, Creating Child Porn
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A west suburban man is going to prison for 35 years, for sexually abusing a little girl he babysat and sharing the images online.
David Vernon Tank, 49, who has lived in Wheaton, Roselle and Bloomingdale, already spent nine years in prison for child pornography.
His new sentence was handed down Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Joan Gottschall, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced.
Tank must serve at least 85 percent of his sentence, and will be on lifetime supervision after he is released. He is already a registered sex offender in Illinois.
Tank recently pleaded guilty to sharing his thousands of child porn pictures and videos online, and to producing the porn himself, prosecutors said.
Between 2006 and 2009, Tank downloaded, viewed, traded and transported child pornography on computers at his apartment in Roselle, and later when he moved to Bloomingdale. When he was arrested in June 2009, Tank had about 6,700 images and 344 videos on his computer and other digital media, prosecutors said.
Tank also admitted that from mid-2007 through March 2009, he sexually abused a 6-to-8-year-old girl he babysat and documented it with a his cell phone camera, a digital camera, and a video recorder.
The images Tank created images are now being found on the computers of other sexual exploitation defendants nationwide, according to court records.
In 2001, Tank was convicted in California of conspiracy to sexually exploit children and related offenses, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Those charges centered around a private online chat room called the "Orchid Club," which conducted "online molestation" — videotaping a 10-year-old girl engaging in sex acts with club members and transmitting the images over the Internet, according to the release.
After serving nine years, including credit for time served, he was released in 2005 and moved to Illinois, where he registered as a convicted sex offender.
The Sun-Times Media Wire contributed to this report.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire © Chicago Sun-Times 2012. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
