A 74-year-old Brockton man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for filming his sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl, capping a case that stretched from his Brockton home to his workplace and other states. Raymond F. Clinton Jr. pleaded guilty to a charge of sexual exploitation of children and was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston, where prosecutors described his conduct as an abhorrent crime marked by almost unfathomable depravity.
According to The Boston Globe, Clinton began assaulting the girl about one month after his wife of 51 years, Rhonda L. (Mank) Clinton, died suddenly in May 2022. Rhonda Clinton was 69 when she died in Brockton, according to an obituary published by Conley, Russell & Pica Funeral Home. Federal prosecutors described repeated sexual assaults, with Clinton filming one in May 2025.
A Pattern of Coercion and Threats
The Globe's reporting, drawn from court proceedings, describes how Clinton took the girl on vacations, on shopping trips, to NBA games, and to concerts, then forced her to engage in sexual acts in exchange for those outings. He also threatened to harm her if she reported the assaults, according to the same account. The girl, along with her mother and stepmother, ultimately reported the abuse to police in June 2025.
Federal prosecutors told the court the girl will live with trauma from the repeated assaults for the rest of her life. Clinton has five children, per the Globe's report, and prosecutors said the sexual assaults took place in the Brockton home, at Clinton's workplace, and in other states.
Defense Cited Grief and Substance Use
Clinton's attorney, Joshua Wood, requested a 15-year sentence and attributed his client's mental-health and decision-making decline to the sudden death of his wife. The defense argument pointed to Clinton's use of substances after her death as part of that decline, the station's report notes. Prosecutors countered by recommending a 30-year sentence, and the court sided with prosecutors. Clinton accepted responsibility for his actions, per the same account.
The defense argued for 15 years, while federal prosecutors recommended 30 years.
Case in Federal Court
Clinton was first charged in a federal criminal complaint filed on August 8, 2025, according to a release detailed by Public Technologies. The complaint was initially assigned to Magistrate Judge Jessica D. Hedges.
The Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood is a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 to mobilize federal, state, and local resources against child sexual exploitation. The article also considers the period after Clinton's prison term.
Federal Court Context
The article places Clinton's case in a federal-court context.
Clinton's case echoes another Project Safe Childhood prosecution out of Brockton. In May 2024, Zaire Aquil Lodge was sentenced to 15 years in the same Boston federal court after posing as a teenager online to coerce minors into producing sexually explicit material in 2021. Lodge had earlier pleaded guilty, and he received five years of supervised release alongside his prison term.
