Newberry man, 35, sentenced to 42 years in prison for possession of child pornography

A Newberry man was sentenced last week to more than four decades in state prison after being found guilty in February of 38 counts of possession of child pornography, court records show.

Patrick Michael Perkins, 35, was found guilty Feb. 20 on all counts during a jury trial at the Judge Stephan P. Mickle Sr. Criminal Courthouse. Judge James M. Colaw then sentenced Perkins on April 2 to 42 years in prison with 45 days of credit for time already served. Perkins also will be designated a sex offender.

An Alachua County Sheriff's Office arrest from January 2023 notes that Deputy Josh Dawson was made aware of multiple cyber tips from the Gainesville Police Department related to child exploitation. Two of the tips from Google included 15 images and two videos that had been updated to Google Drive. Google employees said the images were uploaded between March 7 and July 12, 2022. Two more cyber tips from Google contained two additional images.

According to the report, the images and a video contained "nude, pre-pubescent female children" estimated to be between 6 and 10 years old.

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Google and Cox Communications data led detectives to a home in Newberry, where a search warrant was executed on Nov. 22, 2022. During the search warrant, Deputy Dawson explained to Perkins and a woman in the home what lead him to their residence. He began to read the email address provided by the cyber tip, but was cut off mid-sentence by both Perkins and the woman, who denied any knowledge of the email account, the report says.

In a one-on-one interview with Perkins, Dawson wrote in the report that after describing to Perkins one of the images, he "stared at me without any emotion."

Perkins' cellphone was taken as evidence, the report says. A manual review of the phone was executed on Dec. 2, 2022, which determined that another phone had also been used to login to the email that uploaded the images.

When asked about the second phone, Perkins said he didn't remember getting a new device, and that he was the only one in control of the devices who had access to his accounts.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Newberry man sentenced to 42 years for child pornography lachua County