Vancouver man sentenced for distribution of child pornography

A Vancouver man who exchanged thousands of images of child pornography over a now-defunct social networking service was sentenced Friday to six and a half years in prison, according to a bulletin from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

James Edward Davis, 44, used a free image-sharing program called Google Hello to chat and trade child pornography. He was sentenced to a lifetime of supervision upon his release and lifetime registration as a sex offender.

Davis was investigated in 1998 in connection with child pornography, according to the bulletin.

It took about 10 years, though, before investigators gathered the evidence that led Davis to enter a guilty plea. The photos and online conversations were discovered when the FBI executed a search warrant at Davis’ home in March 2008.

He was indicted for distribution of child pornography in April 2009 and pleaded guilty in October.

“Davis’s own words reveal the extent of his obsession with sex with young boys,” Assistant United States Attorney Aravind Swaminathan wrote in a sentencing memo, according to the release.

Swaminathan noted that this was the second time Davis was prosecuted on charges relating to the distribution of child pornography.

“In particular, Davis’s conversations with other child pornography collectors — the chat logs contemporaneously recorded as Davis traded child pornography — show an obsession with young boys and fantasies of child rape,” Swaminathan wrote.

An analysis of Davis’ computer revealed 731 images of children identified by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to the bulletin.

Bob Albrecht: 360-735-4522 or bob.albrecht@columbian.com.