South Florida man sentenced to 30 years after sexually abusing autistic child
A South Florida man was sentenced Monday to 30 years behind bars after he confessed to making child pornography of an autistic boy.
Ethan Alexander Concepcion, a Port St. Lucie resident, will also have to register as a sexual predator and be under supervised release for the rest of his life after his time in prison, federal court records show.
Metadata from the images revealed that Concepcion likely abused the child on at least four occasions from March 2018 to January 2019, the United States Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida said Tuesday in a news release. The boy was 5 or 6 years old at the time, the office said.
Details of what led to the arrest and conviction of Concepcion, 24, are detailed in his criminal complaint.
Federal agents first got wind of the sexual abuse when Australian police contacted Homeland Security Investigations in mid-January to alert them that a man they were investigating for child abuse had received child porn from a person in Greenacres, a city in Palm Beach County. The man being investigated by Australian law enforcement had received eight videos and 23 photos showing a young boy engaging in sexually explicit conduct with a man about two years earlier.
The child-abuse material had GPS data from Greenacres, and records showed Concepcion was living in the vicinity. In one video, investigators say, a man with facial hair wearing a gold-colored necklace is seen. This information led HSI agents to check Concepcion’s Facebook profile, where he had photos of himself wearing a necklace that resembled the one seen in the child porn video. His profile also showed a photo of him and the boy.
In March, agents interviewed the boy’s mother, who was not named in the criminal complaint. She identified her son in an edited version of one of the sexual abuse images. She also told agents her son is on the autism spectrum disorder, and that he was “nonverbal.”
Two days later, Concepcion tried to kill himself and was hospitalized. In an interview with agents hours after the incident, investigators say he admitted to using one of his email addresses to send pornographic photos and videos of the child and himself.
READ MORE: Here are symptoms of child abuse and where to find help in Florida
In 2017, Concepcion — 19 years old at the time — pleaded guilty to several counts of dealing in stolen property, among others, after authorities accused him of stealing over $20,000 worth of jewelry from the people who hired him as a house- and dog-sitter in Lake Worth, Palm Beach County court records show.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website, about one in four girls and one in 13 boys in the United States experience child sexual abuse. Someone known and trusted by the child or child’s family members perpetrates 91% of child sexual abuse in the country, the CDC says. Many children wait to report or never report child sexual abuse, so the true impact of the problem is likely underestimated, according to the national public health agency.
