Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

A Covington County man was sentenced this week to 25 years in prison by Circuit Judge Benjamin M. Bowden for possession of child pornography.

Jonathan Lee Wallace, 49, was convicted of six counts of possession of obscene matter by a six man and six woman jury after a two-day trial.

“People like Wallace are a clear and present danger to society, and Judge Bowden’s sentence was of great service to promoting public safety in our community,” Covington County District Attorney Walt Merrell said.   

According to the DA’s office, the evidence at trial showed that Wallace had downloaded and uploaded pornographic images of pre-pubescent girls using his Google account. After Google disabled his account and sent a cyber tip to law enforcement, Wallace was interviewed by Covington County Sheriff’s Investigators Joey Cato and Mike Irwin. Among other things presented at the trial, Wallace told the investigators that the girls in the images he had stored on his phone were “pretty to look at.”

The State was represented by Chief Assistant District Attorney Grace Jeter, who thanked law enforcement for their dedication in investigating crimes involving children.

“Thousands of cyber tips involving children are sent in every day, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children relies on the assistance they receive from local law enforcement to stop pedophiles.  Joey Cato and Mike Irwin’s thorough work ensured that we had solid evidence to present to the jury,” Jeter said.   

Jeter, who has spent a large portion of her career prosecuting child predators, added that, “The internet has made the reality and the profitability of child pornography all too real. People buy and sell sexually explicit images of children almost daily on the dark web. We must be diligent to protect these children in every way possible.”

Merrell added that none on the images Wallace possessed were of local children, adding “that doesn’t mean parents don’t need to have hard conversations with their children — boys and girls. Parents must talk to their kids about never taking inappropriate pictures or letting someone else take them. Once they find their way onto the web, we can never get them back.”   

Merrell and Lesa Rathel, former Director of Covington County DHR and current District Administrative Specialist for South Alabama, co-founded the Covington County Child Advocacy Center in 2015 to help assist abused and exploited children.

“It’s because of cases like this that we need the Child Advocacy Center,” Rathel said. “Imagine the trauma a child suffers knowing that their nude images are all over the world circulating amongst the hands of pedophiles.  At the CAC, we have special counseling services just for these types of victims.”

Jeter, who has a deep dedication to the CAC and its work, expressed her concerns for the children in the images Wallace had.

“Although none of them were local children, we still worry and want to try to find them. We make sure that the Internet Crimes Against Children task force and other federal agencies have those pictures. They will work to identify the children with the hopes that, if they are American citizens, they can be found and helped.  That’s always the ‘why’ in what we are doing. We want to protect and help those children.”

Court records indicate that Wallace also faces pending charges of first degree sexual abuse and violation of the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, in unrelated cases. Merrell said Wallace will be fully prosecuted for those crimes. “Jeter has been a stalwart for the office, and she did a great job handling this case.  I think I’ll have her handle his next case, too,” Merrell said.