Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: August 24, 2007
Contact : Sue McKinney
SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF CHILDREN
Maxwell Wood, United States Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, announced today that HAROLD CLINTON LASSETER was sentenced on August 23, 2007 to a term of 342 months in prison by the Honorable W. Louis Sands, Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia. Lasseter, age 53, of Shellman, Georgia, pled guilty on June 4, 2007, to the offense of sexual exploitation of children.
Lasseter, previously the pastor of the Shellman Methodist Church, had entered into a plea agreement in which he admitted that he had accessed an internet website which purported to sell child pornography. After a series of emails, Lasseter ordered two child pornography movies advertised on the website. On February 12, 2007, Lasseter mailed a $71.00 money order to the address listed on the website. Lasseter also mailed a script for a movie he wished to have custom produced. In this script Lasseter requested that a ten or eleven year old girl be filmed engaging in sexually explicit conduct with an adult male acting as the child’s father. Lasseter rented a mailbox in Albany where he directed that the movies be sent.
The website had actually been created by undercover law enforcement agents with the United States Postal Inspection Service and the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation. Lasseter was arrested on February 23, 2007, after retrieving a package from the mailbox which he believed contained the two movies he had ordered from the website. Lasseter’s sentence must served in its entirety, as there is no parole in the Federal prison system.
Mr. Wood remarked that “the child pornography industry exists because there are persons who want to purchase it, and the United States Attorney’s Office is dedicated to prosecuting all persons involved in the sexual exploitation of children to the fullest extent of the law.”
Assistant United States Attorney K. Alan Dasher prosecuted the case. Inquiries regarding the case should be directed to Sue McKinney, Public Affairs Specialist, United States Attorney’s Office at (478) 621-2602.
