Crime & Courts

Eagle River man sentenced to prison for child porn stored on state-issued work computer

An Eagle River man and former state of Alaska employee was sentenced Tuesday to spend 6 1/2 years in prison for having child pornography on his state-issued work computer.

John Daniel Brooks, 52, pleaded guilty last week to one federal count of distribution and receipt of child pornography.

The case involved one of the largest collections of images that FBI agents in Alaska had ever seen, according to court documents.

Brooks had more than 1.2 million images of suspected child exploitation on an internal hard drive that he had installed on the computer, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska.

Brooks was a programmer at the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. His employment was terminated shortly after the charges were filed in September 2021, according to a public information officer for the Department of Administration.

The state contacted the FBI that month over suspicions that Brooks had explicit images of children on his computer. Brooks told FBI agents during an interview after his arrest that he had been viewing child pornography for 30 years and spent several hours daily during weekdays seeking out or looking at explicit images on his state computer, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by a federal prosecutor.

During the interview with FBI agents, Brooks said “he would never hurt a child, that he knew his attraction to children was wrong and that he wanted help for his problem,” according to a sentencing memo filed by the federal public defender representing him. Investigators found no evidence that he had harmed a child, the memo said.

Brooks was sentenced to spend the rest of his life on supervised release after serving his prison sentence.

Tess Williams

Tess Williams is a reporter focusing on breaking news and public safety. Before joining the ADN in 2019, she was a reporter for the Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota. Contact her at twilliams@adn.com.

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