LAFAYETTE, La. — A federal judge in Louisiana has ordered a boat captain to serve 160 years in prison for exploiting a girl to make child pornography, and to pay the girl more than $200,000.
District Judge S. Maurice Hicks Jr. also ordered lifetime supervised release for William Malone, 46, of Mobile, if he gets out of prison, U.S. Attorney Brandon B. Brown said in a news release Tuesday.
Malone “showed no remorse for the awful acts he did. But this minor victim had the courage to tell someone what he did to her and today, she stood victorious knowing that he will never hurt another victim in this way again,” Brown said.
The girl, also from Mobile, was less than 12 years old when she told her mother in 2020 that Malone had abused her, prosecutors have said.
FBI agents examined the girl's phone and found texts asking for pictures and videos of herself naked and other sexually explicit images of herself, prosecutors said. Malone was captain of a vessel that sailed out of Abbeville, Louisiana, and the images were on his phone and laptop, found in a search of that vessel.
A jury in Lafayette convicted Malone in October 2021 on five counts of sexual exploitation of children by producing child pornography and two related charges.
The judge ordered him to pay the girl $206,580.80 in restitution, prosecutors said.
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