A computer. (Photo via Dmitry Tishchenko/Shutterstock)
A Florida man previously convicted of child pornography crimes will serve a prison sentence that’s more than five times longer than his previous one — after authorities found him up to his old habits while out on supervised release.
Christian Kline, a 32-year-old from Moore Haven, originally received a sentence of 5 years and 10 months’ imprisonment for transporting child sexual abuse materials in 2016. That term of incarceration was to be followed by a 20-year term of supervised release.
By 2022, Kline had completed his prison sentence, but he still had to report to the U.S. Probation Department for routine polygraph examinations.
“During one such examination with U.S. Probation, Kline revealed that he had been downloading images and videos of child sexual abuse from the dark web,” the Justice Department wrote in a press release on Tuesday. “Further investigation revealed that Kline possessed numerous electronic devices which contained images and videos of child sexual abuse, including images and videos that Kline had distributed to another individual.”
The plea documents show Kline had several smartphones and a tablet, which were all forensically scanned. Authorities found they contained numerous illicit images and communications.
“A forensic search of each device, except for the Samsung Galaxy Tablet, revealed images and videos of minors engaged in sexual acts,” the documents stated. “A forensic search of the Motorola moto e smartphone […] revealed a text exchange between the defendant and Individual A.”
In a text message exchange between Sept. 14 and Sept. 18, 2021, Kline asked whether “Individual A” had “any young pics.”
According to the plea agreement, Kline sent four videos involving girls as young as 8 years old involved in sexual acts.
“The images of child pornography retrieved were sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which has currently identified 66 images from 38 known child pornography series,” the 19-page agreement states. “The images of the victims identified by NCMEC originated from a variety of domestic and foreign locations outside the state of Florida.”
Kline pleaded guilty to his most recent crime on Aug. 3, 2022.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Barber, a Donald Trump appointee from the Middle District of Florida, dealt a much heavier sentence for Kline’s repeat offense: 327 months of incarceration, the equivalent of 27 years and three months.
Once he completes his latest sentence, Kline will be subject to supervised release for the rest of his life. He must also pay restitution to his victims in the amount of $24,000.
Restitution in cases involving the downloading and dissemination of childhood sexual abuse materials are designed to combat the continuing harms to the child, every time the record of abuse is consumed.
“Judges have described the harm that victims of child sexual abuse imagery suffer as ‘death by a thousand cuts,’ referring to the twofold harm that victims of child sexual abuse imagery suffer,” MacKenzie Durkin, a J.D. Candidate, noted in the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal in 2021, quoting the words of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “First, these victims have been harmed by the physical sexual abuse that was recorded. Second, they are harmed by the viewership and continuous circulation of those images.”
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