Crime & Courts

Two Anchorage men found guilty on child porn charges in past week

Two Anchorage men have been convicted of possession and distribution of child pornography in the past week. The most recent conviction, handed down Wednesday, involved a defendant who gave music lessons to local children.

Twenty-six-year-old Stuart Ravn was found guilty on 22 counts relating to possession and distribution of child porn, according to assistant attorney general Adam Alexander. Ravn faces a sentence range of two to 12 years for each of the counts. He will also be required to register as a sex offender for life if released.

Alexander said in a Wednesday news release that trial evidence indicated Ravn "was a member of a sophisticated Internet-based Russian child pornography ring." Ravn possessed and distributed "numerous videos and images" of children, some as young as toddlers. Several of the criminal counts against him related to depictions of masochism and sadism involving the children, he said.

Ravn gave music lessons to children out of his parents' home, according to Alexander. Investigators found nothing to suggest the defendant abused any of his students, he said.

When asked if the case was significant, Alexander responded, "All cases involving sex exploitation of children are significant in the sense that they're not victimless crimes. The children that are depicted in the images ... are perpetually trafficked on the Internet."

Ravn is set to be sentenced on Nov. 14.

Additionally, on Friday, Anchorage man Richard M. O'Connor was found guilty of six similar counts. The 32-year-old faces two to 12 years for each count as well.

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"O'Connor was found to possess and distribute over the course of at least a decade images and videos of sexual sadism and sexual penetration involving children ranging in age from 6 to 10 years old," Alexander said.

Police caught O'Connor when he sent images of child sexual exploitation to undercover detectives, according to a Daily News story at that time.

Alexander said a total of three computers were seized from O'Connor's residence. The six counts were based on a representative sample of images taken from each device; there were hundreds of images in all, the prosecutor said.

O'Connor lived in Alaska and Outside during the three years he collected the child porn. Alexander said it's fortunate detectives were able to track him down because "there are an enormous number of people using various networks to share child sexual exploitation images."

The Anchorage Police Department's Cyber Crime Unit investigated both cases.

Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that Ravn and O'Connor were convicted by juries. Both men were convicted in bench trials.

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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