David John Dohrman, 52, and Jacqueline Michelle Dohrman, 49, a married couple from House Springs, have been sentenced to prison after admitting to possession of child pornography, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reported.
U.S. District Judge Catherine D. Perry sentenced David Dohrman on Dec. 20 to nine years in prison and ordered him to pay $6,000 in restitution to victims who appeared in the images. Perry sentenced Jacquelin Dohrman to seven years in prison in November, court records show.
The couple searched for and shared pictures and video of child porn with each other from January 2020 through March 2021. An investigation into the pair began in October 2020 when David Dohrman sent a video containing child sexual abuse to his wife through Facebook, according to the guilty plea agreements.
Facebook reported the video on Oct. 1, 2020, to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. A St. Louis County Police detective traced the Facebook accounts to David and Jacqueline Dohrman and obtained a search warrant for their home in March 2021, the plea said.
David and Jacqueline Dohrman both said the Facebook accounts used to share the video were theirs, but David Dohrman said they had been locked out of their accounts because someone had remotely accessed and tampered with them. A detective told David Dohrman the accounts were locked because of the activity detected by Facebook, according to the plea agreement.
David Dohrman said he searched for, downloaded, possessed and sent child porn, and he said he last searched for it in January or February 2021. Jacqueline Dohrman also said she shared porn with her husband, using Facebook and Instagram, the plea said.
Investigators found more than 600 images of child porn on the couple’s cell phones. The couple also discussed bringing a young girl they had seen in a restaurant home from school, according to the plea.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson handled the case for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The case was investigated by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, St. Louis County Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, go to justice.gov/psc.