Arlington, Texas, man sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for possessing child pornography

FORT WORTH, Texas - A man from Arlington, Texas, who pleaded guilty in October 2010 to one count of possessing child pornography, was sentenced on Friday by U.S. District Judge John McBryde to 15 years in prison to be followed by a lifetime of supervised release, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas.

Thurman J. Kitchen, 40, has been in custody since his arrest in September 2010. Noting Kitchen's prior child pornography conviction, Judge McBryde upwardly departed from the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.

According to documents filed in the case, in June 2010, officers with the Arlington Police Department visited the Kitchen residence based on a lead from an individual who had purchased a computer from Kitchen. Images of child pornography were found on that computer. Agents examined Kitchen's computer and related storage media and discovered child pornography that Kitchen admitted downloading from the Internet. Kitchen was convicted in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas in 1999 for possessing child pornography.

The case was investigated by the Arlington Police Department and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex C. Lewis, Northern District of Texas, prosecuted this case.

This investigation is part of Operation Predator, a nationwide ICE initiative to protect children from sexual predators, including those who travel overseas for sex with minors, Internet child pornographers, criminal alien sex offenders, and child sex traffickers.

ICE encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE. This hotline is staffed around the clock by investigators.

Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, an ICE partner, at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.