An Amherst man has been slapped with a 4 ½ to 5-year prison stint after pleading guilty to distributing child pornography. Blake Lassiter, a former member of the U.S. Coast Guard, was implicated in a sordid scheme of sending and receiving child sex abuse images, involving a party in the United Kingdom, officials said.
According to the Northwestern District Attorney's office, Lassiter, 31, is already behind bars, serving a concurrent two-year sentence for similar sins in Oregon. Massachusetts authorities plan to tack on his latest sentence after he’s done serving time on the West Coast, as reported by MassLive.
Authorities were tipped off to Lassiter through cyber tips, which led to the grim discovery of his participation in child exploitation via a Reddit account. Following a thorough investigation, he owned up to nine counts of dissemination and possession with sinister intent to distribute the heinous material.
Lassiter's guilty plea brought a heavy hand from the court, mandating five years of probation post-prison, which includes zero tolerance for unsupervised contact with minors, mandatory sex offender treatment, and a free rein for the Probation Department to search his digital devices, WWLP reported.
Despite the best efforts by the Amherst Police Department and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the children in these troubling images remain unidentified. "We were unable to identify the child victims depicted in these images, but we know the impact of the defendant’s behavior on those children is devastating" Northwestern Assistant District Attorney Anne Yereniuk stated, as obtained by MassLive. Their quest to protect the innocence of youth continues unabated.
The case marks a small victory in the ongoing battle against the digital dissemination of child exploitation, as evidenced by a multi-state investigation that finally caught up with this former coast guardsman. According to Western Mass News, after Lassiter wraps his Oregon sentence, he faces the additional Massachusetts time and a probation period aimed at closely monitoring his rehabilitation and ensuring community safety.
