(WJET/WFXP)– A Pennsylvania man caught up in an online predator hunting group’s operation was sentenced for requesting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) from what he thought was a 15-year-old girl.
Jason Gorrie, 43, of Kane, appeared in court on Thursday, March 5, after pleading guilty to criminal use of a communication facility, attempted sexual abuse of a child and criminal solicitation of CSAM in November.
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McKean County District Attorney Stephanie Vettenburg-Shaffer asked the court to set a maximum sentence for Gorrie, so he would serve his time in state prison, saying that letters he wrote to the court blamed his behavior on a breakup and not taking his prescribed medication, saying they avoided him taking accountability.
The judge agreed, sentencing Gorrie to 6-24 months in state prison, 24 months of concurrent parole, three years of supervised release, along with registering as a sex offender for the next 15 years.
Gorrie was arrested on July 24 after McKean County District Attorney Stephanie Vettenburg-Shaffer said investigators received a tip from an online group called 814PredHunters, who had an adult pose as a 15-year-old girl.
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Vettenburg-Shaffer said Gorrie admitted in court to asking the decoy for CSAM nine times before the online interactions were turned over to Bradford police at his guilty plea hearing.
District Attorney Stephanie Vettenburg-Shaffer released a statement reading:
“Anytime an offender is sentenced to serve a jail sentence, the Judge must set a minimum and a maximum. Our legislators set the standard range for the minimum. And the maximum sentence must be at least double the minimum. In this case, the range for the minimum set by the legislature was 3-6 months. The judge sentenced him to a 6-month minimum which is on the high end of the range. The maximum is required to be at least double that, so it was required to be 12 months or more. In this case, the judge set the maximum at 24 months which triggered the location of the sentence to be served in a state prison rather than the county jail. In addition to determining where the sentence will be served, a state sentence provides that the parole board determines when someone is paroled whereas in the county jail, offenders typically are released after serving the minimum and then spend the rest of their time on supervision.”
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