Dorchester Man Charged With Receipt of Child Sexual Abuse Material

BOSTON — A Dorchester man has been arrested and charged in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts with receipt of child sexual abuse material, the Justice Department announced on June 1, 2026.

The single defendant faces one count under 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2), the statute that prohibits knowing receipt or distribution of any visual depiction of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct. Federal law sets a five-year mandatory minimum prison term and a 20-year maximum for a first offense; a prior conviction for a sex crime would raise the mandatory minimum to 15 years.

The arrest directly alters the defendant's legal status from uncharged suspect to federal defendant, placing him in pretrial detention or under court-ordered conditions of release while the case proceeds. Conviction would automatically impose supervised release of five years to life, mandatory restitution to victims identified in the material, and lifetime sex-offender registration under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

Downstream, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts must now disclose any forensic evidence recovered from the defendant’s devices, including the number of images and videos and the age range of the depicted minors. That disclosure will determine the applicable Sentencing Guidelines range and trigger victim-notification obligations under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

The case also adds one more prosecution to the department’s nationwide enforcement priority targeting online CSAM networks, which in recent years has produced annual increases in both arrests and terabytes of seized material.

This prosecution follows the department’s standard practice of charging individual possessors and receivers in federal court when forensic evidence establishes interstate transmission, typically via peer-to-peer networks or dark-web forums. The June 1 announcement is the sole charging document released in the matter to date.