Man charged with making child porn; 3-month-old in images is rescued
A 3-month-old boy was removed from a Littlerock home and a man arrested on federal charges that he produced child pornography with the infant and emailed it to an undercover detective in England, officials said Tuesday.
Robert Dale Schrader, 33, of Littlerock, was taken into federal custody Monday on two counts of producing child pornography after an investigation by the Long Beach-based, multiagency Child Exploitation Investigations Group.
“This is one of the youngest, if not the youngest, child pornography victims ever identified in the Los Angeles area,” said Claude Arnold, special agent in charge for Immigration & Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles, which played a lead role in the investigation.
“Fortunately, remarkable international cooperation and very astute detective work enabled us to locate this infant and rescue him just hours after receiving the initial lead,” Arnold said Tuesday.
The investigation into Schrader, a landscaper, began Jan. 29 after British authorities alerted a Homeland Security attaché in London that an individual using a Yahoo email account had sent multiple sexually explicit images of an infant to an undercover officer in England, according to court records.
Information embedded in those images allegedly indicated they had been taken in the vicinity of Schrader’s Littlerock home, according to the criminal complaint.
The same day, investigators with a federal search warrant searched Schrader’s home, where they found the child pictured in the photos. Investigators removed the baby and turned him over to the L.A. County Department of Children & Family Services. Authorities said the infant is related to Schrader.
Authorities during the search removed other potential evidence, including children’s clothing and computer equipment. Schrader was due in court Tuesday on two counts of production of child pornography. If convicted of both counts, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a possible maximum sentence of 60 years.
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