Child molester sentenced to 20 years in prison
A 31-year-old Weatherford man pled guilty to molesting a 13-year-old girl and possessing child pornography and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a case that concluded in District Court in Weatherford last Thursday.
Tracy Dean Jones pled guilty to one count of indecency with a child and eight counts of possession of child pornography before 415th District Judge Graham Quisenberry, who found him guilty and sentenced him to 20 years on the indecency charge and 10 years each on the child pornography charges. Sentences on all of the counts will run concurrently.
“This was a difficult, complex case,” said Parker County Assistant District Attorney Jeff Swain, who prosecuted the case. “On the indecency with a child case, our victim was a special needs child, which presents challenges that are obvious when you are looking at going to trial.”
Swain said the case started with a cybertip in February 2017 from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which had received a report from dropbox.com of suspected child pornography that a customer had placed on their site. Swain said that report went through the Dallas Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and then to the Weatherford Police Department who followed up and arrested Jones for possession of child pornography.
“With regard to the child pornography case, our forensic evaluation showed that the defendant did not download the child pornography onto any of the devices that we seized during the execution of our search warrant,” Swain said. “Instead, what he did was to set up a dropbox account online into which he deposited quite a number of images and videos of child pornography. He had these digital files catalogued into folders by topic, such as by the race, ethnicity, or age of the child depicted. We were able to link the dropbox account back to Mr. Jones through the email address that he used to set up the account as well as a few other factors.”
Swain said following his arrest, Child Protective Services conducted interviews with some children whom Jones had contacted to make sure they had not been harmed.
“The victim in our sexual abuse case made an outcry during one of those screenings,” Swain said. “She later described more completely what had happened to her in a forensic interview with the Paluxy River Children’s Advocacy Center in Granbury and to medical staff at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth.”
Jones will not be eligible for parole until the year 2028, Swain said.
