A 27-year-old Kenai man was sentenced to six years in prison Monday for possessing child pornography, according to federal prosecutors.
Phillip James Scott Miller pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in September, the U.S. Attorney for Alaska said.
Federal investigators began looking into Miller's conduct in May 2016 after he shared images with law enforcement officials that depicted child sexual exploitation. Miller used a file-sharing network to send the images, prosecutors say.
When investigators searched Miller's home in Kenai, they seized his computer and found 36 images of sexual exploitation of children under the age of 12. He had also used search terms to find images of child sexual exploitation, such as "Toddlercon Incest," prosecutors said.
Court documents show that Miller said he was abused by another child when he was a minor, a claim he sought to use to mitigate his prison sentence. But Miller also sexually abused his sisters in 2005, when he was 15, documents say.
In March 2017, when being interviewed by police about child pornography, Miller admitted that he abused a third sibling when he was a minor. Based on his past, prosecutors argued that any abuse he claimed to face as a minor should not lessen his prison sentence.
Miller will spend 6 years in prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, according to prosecutors.