Jonathan High. (Image via a Taylor County, Florida jail booking photo.)
A Florida church deacon has been convicted of two counts of using a child to produce child pornography, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.
Jonathan High, 30, of Steinhatchee, Florida, also pleaded guilty to one count of possession of child pornography prior to trial, the DOJ said.
The convictions came after a one-day bench trial.
“High faces a minimum mandatory sentence of 15 years in prison and a combined maximum of 70 years in prison for all three counts” when he’s sentenced by U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor on Jan. 9, 2023, the DOJ said.
According to various court documents, the case unfolded when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children presented law enforcement officers with a “Cybertip” from Verizon about a cloud storage account that contained uploaded files of what appeared to be child pornography.
Subscriber information about the account in question indicated that it was attached to a phone number somehow controlled by the defendant’s mother, court records indicate. The account also contained the name of a business owned by the High family; the defendant was an employee of that establishment.
The defendant’s mother died in November 2021, court papers indicate. That’s a few months after the tip occurred in August.
The actual number and email address used to upload the images were High’s, authorities concluded. The court records suggest, but do not explicitly state, that the defendant’s mother may have been responsible for the bill for multiple devices.
“An investigation revealed the account belonged to High,” the DOJ concluded in a press release. “Law enforcement officers obtained a search warrant for High’s cell phones and desktop computer, and after an examination of their contents, confirmed that High was in possession of multiple child pornography images and videos that depicted prepubescent boys engaged in sex acts or exposing their genitals in a lascivious manner.”
A trial brief says “hundreds, if not thousands, of images of child pornography” were on the defendant’s accounts. Those images appear to have been materials he downloaded and stored.
However, there was more.
“Further investigation revealed that some of these images and videos were produced by High personally; High produced separate video recordings of two young boys using the bathroom in a Perry, Florida church where High served as a deacon,” the DOJ added.
Court records say High was a deacon at the “Antioch Revival Church” in that municipality.
The court paperwork continues:
Following High’s arrest, the two children in the videos which were taken on High’s phone were identified as being members of High’s church in Taylor County and were interviewed by FDLE. The children, an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old boy were also both identified as the children in the videos by their respective guardians. Both guardians identified the videos as being taken at the Antioch Revival Church. One of the children remembered being in the bathroom and hearing a camera going off but did not know who was taking the picture. The other child remembered being in the bathroom and seeing High stick a phone over the stall that he was in while the child was going to the bathroom.
A trial brief filed by the DOJ on Sept. 30 says the government’s exhibits included a “total of five red binders” containing child sexual assault materials. Several “discs and flash drives” of said evidence were also submitted.
After he was arrested, court records say High admitted that the phone number and the email address associated with the accounts which contained the images were his. His wife gave federal agents permission to search an additional computer from the couple’s home and an additional phone.
The original indictment and press release are below:
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