Pa. Man Pleads Guilty to Secretly Recording Boys in Maryland House, Chesapeake House Rest Area Bathrooms

From the office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland:

Baltimore, Maryland – Brian Matthew Williams, age 28, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty today to receipt of child pornography.

The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Stephen E. Vogt of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Colonel Marcus L. Brown, Superintendent of the Maryland State Police; Cecil County State’s Attorney Ellis Rollins; and United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania Zane D. Memeger.

“This defendant egregiously violated the privacy of young boys by secretly recording them in public restrooms, a crime that gives every parent nightmares,” said U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. “I am grateful to the vigilant citizen who noticed the unusual behavior and immediately called 9-1-1, and to the police and prosecutors who conducted an urgent investigation.”

According to his plea agreement, on May 6, 2012, Williams spent nearly five hours at the Maryland House and Chesapeake House rest stops on I-95, going in and out of the men’s restrooms filming several minor males, most of whom were prepubescent, as they used the urinals. Williams positioned himself at an adjacent urinal and used his cellular telephone to create 21 videos focused on the genitals of minor males. Two of the videos depict two minor males urinating and captures images of one of the prepubescent minor male’s exposed penis. After capturing the images of the minor males using the urinals, Williams would exit the restroom and wait for the minor males to walk out, then capture full length images of the minor males, including their faces. After the parents of one of the victims reported Williams’ suspicious behavior to Maryland State Police, he was arrested, charged in Cecil County and released on bond the same day.

On June 13, 2012, a search warrant was executed at Williams’ residence and computers and other digital media were seized. A forensic analysis of those items revealed that a number of hard drives appeared to have been removed and on the remaining hard drive the operating system had been reinstalled on May 28, 2012.

A subsequent background investigation of Williams revealed that he had been questioned by law enforcement on two previous occasions under similar circumstances. In 2007, Williams was contacted by law enforcement after they received several complaints about him following minors into the restroom at a college basketball game. In June 2010, Williams was questioned and released after an off-duty police officer saw him in the restroom of a movie theater pointing his cell phone at the genitals of minor males using the urinals.

Williams faces a minimum mandatory sentence of 5 years in prison and a maximum of 20 years in prison, followed by up to lifetime of supervised release, for receipt of child pornography.

Williams and the government have agreed that if the Court accepts the plea, a sentence of between 10 and 14 years in prison, followed by up to a lifetime of supervised release, is the appropriate disposition of the case. U.S. District Judge Ellen L. Hollander has scheduled sentencing for February 1, 2013 at 10:30 a m.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the “resources” tab on the left of the page.

United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI, Maryland State Police, Cecil County State’s Attorney’s Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Judson T. Mihok, who is prosecuting the case.