Vacationer returning from cruise is caught with thousands of child porn images, feds say

A vacationer returning from a cruise to the Bahamas was met by a federal agent in Florida who searched his iPhone and found child pornography images, prosecutors said.

The agent’s search of the Virginia man’s phone after the commercial ship docked at Port Canaveral on Sept. 9, 2021 was part of a border search — leading investigators to find more than 4,500 images and videos of child sex abuse and bestiality, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.

Now a judge has sentenced Christopher Michael Ratten, 32, of Stafford to seven years in federal prison, the office announced in a Jan. 12 news release. This comes after officials said he pleaded guilty to transporting child sex abuse imagery in October.

Several of the images found on his phone involved the abuse of infants or toddlers, according to prosecutors.

Ratten “fed his perversion through a vast and rapidly growing collection of explicit images and videos of children and animals being sexually abused,” Homeland Security Investigations Orlando Assistant Special Agent in Charge David J. Pezzutti said in a statement.

Ratten’s attorney Eric Barker told McClatchy News in a statement on Jan. 12 that they are happy the judge issued a sentence that was below the recommended guidelines in this case.

Ratten’s sentencing guidelines had previously been set at between 10 and and 12.5 years in prison, court documents show.

Barker said his client “has no prior criminal history, extremely strong family support, and was found to not present a heightened risk of harm or danger to the community.”

In asking the government for a lesser sentence, Barker acknowledged that there’s evidence his client asked an unspecified individual for “Black lesbian child pornography” and was sent videos of infants and toddlers instead, according to a sentencing memo.

He also argued a psychosexual evaluation of Ratten revealed he “showed no interest at all in males of any age or girls under the age of 14,” the memo states in part.

“The only sexual interest exhibited was of postpubescent adolescent females and adult females,” the sentencing memo also said.

Ultimately, a doctor diagnosed him with pedophilic disorder based on the photos discovered on his phone, according to the sentencing memo.

While Ratten’s family members wrote letters to the judge in defense of his character, with his uncle calling his actions a “mistake,” according to the sentencing memorandum, agent Pezzutti described him as a predator.

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