April 21, Staff Report
A Long Island City man pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography yesterday and could face up to three years in prison.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced that 23-year-old Charles Flores, who lives on 38th Street, pleaded guilty to possessing images of a sexual performance by a child after police received a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that he had uploaded child porn to his Google account last September.
“The defendant has admitted that his curiosity became an obsession and that he sought out, downloaded and saved several thousand images and videos of children – some as young as five – being sexually abused by adults,” Brown said. “These are not just pictures and videos. They are for all intents and purposes crime scene photos of children being sexually abused. They are real people who will have to live with the abuse they suffered for the rest of their lives. This defendant will go to prison as a result of his actions.”
According to the charges, detectives received the tip that Flores had uploaded two images involving child abuse to his Google account, [email protected], and the defendant admitted the account was his when interviewed by detectives.
While examining the defendant’s hard drive, police found 20 images of prepubescent children roughly between the ages of five and 12 being vaginally and anally penetrated by adult men.
Flores told detectives that he had begun looking for child pornography to help his girlfriend, and it had turned in to an obsession. When police examined his electronic devices further they found hundreds of images and videos of children being abused, as young as four years old.
Flores will be sentenced on June 12 and will face between one and three years in prison.
