Man made teens send nude photos with ‘Property of Preston’ written on bodies, feds say
A 30-year-old man in Tennessee is accused of demanding nude photographs from teenage girls he met on social media, psychologically manipulating them and threatening exposure if they refused him.
Now he’ll spend the next three decades behind bars.
Preston Andrew Watson was sentenced to 30 years in prison with an additional 20 years of supervised release, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee said Wednesday in a news release.
He will also be required to register as a sex offender. He pleaded guilty to one count of child pornography production and one count of distribution of child pornography.
Watson is accused of lording naked photographs over at least four girls he met online starting in 2016. He lived in Scott County on the Kentucky border, about an hour outside of Knoxville. But the victims — who were between 14 and 16 years old — lived as far as Virginia, North Carolina and Sweden, the government said.
Watson is accused of threatening to send the pictures to school administrators or post them online if the teenagers didn’t send more, often with “orders to mark their bodies as his property and pose in exposed positions,” prosecutors said.
In sentencing documents, the government said Watson “manipulated his emotionally vulnerable victims into believing he cared about them” and “psychologically raped them for his own perverse pleasure.”
The girls eventually reported him to federal authorities in Knoxville and an investigation was launched.
A grand jury indicted Watson on charges of child pornography and extortion in September 2019, court filings show. He was arrested two days later, and a judge ordered he remain in jail pending trial given the allegations against him.
In a two-page statement accompanying his order, the judge said Watson was addicted to electronics and had recently been charged with soliciting a minor and harassment. He also said some of his victims were suicidal and that Watson found a way to contact one of them even after investigators seized his computer and devices.
“The court is concerned about defendant’s ability to access the Internet and social media, and the resulting risk of harm to potential minor victims,” the judge wrote.
Prosecutors pushed for a lengthy punishment after Watson pleaded guilty to producing and distributing child porn in July.
They pointed to his lack of respect for the law, the “vicious” threats he is accused of making as well as the impact on the known victims and the countless others who have not come forward.
According to court documents, Watson was previously arrested in 2014 and accused of soliciting nude photographs from a 15-year-old girl on social media. Prosecutors said he got the girl’s phone number when he sold a phone to her and her mother. He pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment in May 2016.
Around the same time, Watson reportedly met a girl online in Virginia. Prosecutors said he demanded she send him sexually explicit pictures with his name scrawled on her body parts.
“If I am going to be treated as a monster I may as well earn it,” Watson wrote in a text message to her, court filings show. “As such the amount of pictures you owe me is 18 total. Not 8.”
A 16-year-old in Sweden told investigators he also threatened to send the explicit photos she sent him to her school.
“The minor believed this threat because earlier in their communications the defendant had offered to help her with a homework assignment,” prosecutors said. “The victim had sent the homework document from her school e-mail address.”
The girls reported Watson to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which in turn tipped off federal investigators. Prosecutors said they found a folder for each of the victims on Watson’s computer.
“Especially disturbing was the defendant’s trophies of (pornographic) images of the young girls’ naked bodies exposed and indelibly marked with: ‘Property of Preston Watson,’” the government said.
Investigators found an additional 47 images and 147 videos of other victims on Watson’s computer.
“The harsh reality is this defendant has at least four known victims, but we may never know the full extent of all the minor girls he has victimized who are too afraid to come forward,” prosecutors said. “His victims are young impressionable girls.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2021 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Man made teens send nude photos with ‘Property of Preston’ written on bodies, feds say."
