Social worker Andrew William Young awaits sentencing on child porn conviction; counseled children on air force base

June 27, 2011

According to the docket of the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska, clinical social worker Andrew William Young, who is licensed in Alaska, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, pleaded guilty to charges of sexual exploitation of a child (production and attempted production of child pornography) and receipt and attempted receipt of child pornography.

Young, a Lieutenant Commander with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, worked with children at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, until his arrest in October 2009.

According to the plea agreement signed by Young, he was identified during a 2009 police investigation.  Following up a tip that Young possessed child pornography, a detective with the Anchorage Police, using “Limewire peer-to-peer file sharing software,” downloaded videos which, upon review, were found to contain child pornography and which were traced as having come from a computer belonging to Young.

The Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force executed a search warrant for Young’s house in which they seized additional child pornography dating back to 1983, including a computer hard drive containing 747 videos and 4,300 digital images of child pornography.  The amount of material removed from Young’s residence has been characterized as the largest amount of physical evidence of any single children pornography case to date.

Further analysis of other of Young’s computer hard drives revealed nude images of a boy that Young himself had photographed in his home.  The boy was located and interviewed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Officials. He identified himself in the photos and reported that Young had taken them when he was ten years old in Young’s then-home in Wichita Falls, Texas.

Authorities interviewed friends of Young’s who were stationed with him at Sheppard Air Force Base (in Wichita Falls) at the time.  Those friends reviewed sanitized versions of the photos and identified both the room in the house where they were taken and the boy.

Sentencing in the matter has been continued numerous times and is currently scheduled for July 20, 2011.

Source: Criminal Docket and Plea Agreement, USA vs. Young, Case No. 3:09-CR-00129-JWS, in the United States District Court for the District of Alaska and James Halpin, “Social worker charged with possessing child pornography,” Anchorage Daily News, October 23, 2009.