A Cobb County man who convinced young girls to send him sexually explicit photos and videos was sentenced to 40 years in federal prison, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.
Benjamin Jenkins, 25, of Mableton, was convicted in January of nine counts of producing child pornography and three counts of distributing child pornography. If the teenage girls didn’t cooperate with Jenkins' demands for more photos, he would publish the images or send them to the girls' family and friends, according to prosecutors.
“Jenkins exploited as many as 150 girls for his perverse satisfaction, causing unbelievable trauma to these children and their families,” U.S. Attorney BJay Pak said in an emailed statement. “The sheer degradation and depravity that Jenkins forced his victims to endure is unimaginable. This sentence will hopefully help these courageous victims and their families heal.”
Jenkins — also known as Rei, Reithe8th and Dani Domo — began targeting girls between the ages of 13 and 16 in 2015, according to prosecutors. He used different online aliases and profiles to trick the girls into sending him photos, Pak’s office said.
After Jenkins got the photos, he threatened to post the pictures online or send them to family and friends if they didn’t send more images, according to investigators. Jenkins told the girls what body parts to show, what poses he wanted them to make, and to insert objects into their bodies. He also humiliated victims by forcing them to send videos of themselves drinking urine or licking toilets, prosecutors said.
If a girl did not provide him with a photo or video quickly enough, Jenkins would start a countdown clock, giving the girl a certain amount of time to provide him with an image before he started posting her other images online, prosecutors said.
“No sentence will ever bring back the innocence that this monster stole from hundreds of girls,” acting Special Agent in Charge Robert Hammer, with Homeland Security, said in an emailed statement. “These victims were trapped in a vicious cycle from which they could not escape. We will continue to go after these predators while educating our youth about the dangers of sextortion.”
After serving his prison sentence, Jenkins will spend the remainder of his life on supervised release and must register as a sex offender, Pak’s office said.
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