PALMER — A 35-year-old Palmer man was sentenced to 25 years in prison on federal charges after capturing images of several dozen people including two children on a smartphone he hid in a grocery store bathroom.
Along with prison time, Jesse Damon will be supervised upon release for the rest of his life, according to a judgment signed Thursday by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Ralph Beistline. Damon entered a guilty plea to attempted production of child pornography in an agreement with prosecutors he signed in late November.
Damon admitted he hid a phone and battery pack in a vent in the store bathroom to capture explicit images in 2022, the agreement states.
The store involved was the Fred Meyer store in Palmer, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Anchorage.
A store employee in May 2022 found the phone and battery in the family bathroom after noticing a loose vent, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by prosecutors.
The employee opened the video app and spotted Damon “as he perhaps inadvertently recorded himself in the process of hiding the phone,” the memo said. The employee notified law enforcement after surveillance cameras captured him trying to recover the phone, it said.
Authorities also found evidence on the phone that Damon had “received and distributed ‘commercial’ images depicting child sexual abuse using platforms and services including Kik, Dropbox, and Mega,” the memo said.
He was indicted on federal charges of sexual exploitation of a child/production of child pornography in June 2022.
Prosecutors called Damon a “recidivist sex offender” who has engaged in escalating patterns of behavior since his release from prison on a 2008 child pornography possession conviction. The 25-year sentence is a mandatory minimum in this case, they said.
There are eight victims eligible for $3,000 restitution each in the case but the amount due a ninth victim is in question, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by a federal public defender representing Damon.
Beistline deferred the determination of restitution until mid-February. He recommended Damon be placed at a federal prison that offers a residential sex-offender treatment program.