FRIENDSWOOD — U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent on Friday sentenced a Friendswood man who pleaded guilty in August to receipt and possession of child pornography to 51 months in prison.
Federal agents traced a person with the online handle “bigtim8u” to Timothy L. Bourgeois’ home after receiving a complaint about someone using that identity to post sexually explicit pictures of an underage girl in a Web site called “Our Younger Sisters” in December 2001.
FBI agents searched the 48-year-old’s house in March 2002 and seized two computers and seven computer floppy disks from an upstairs playroom, close to his three daughters’ bedrooms. The seized computers held more than 450 still photographs and 10 movies of child pornography, all in what the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Houston called “well organized and correctly labeled” computer folders and files.
Bourgeois’ child pornography collection consisted of teenagers, prepubescent children, toddlers and even infants as young as an estimated 10 months old, subjected to a variety of sexually explicit conduct by adult men and women. The FBI had previously identified at least eight of the girls shown in Bourgeois’ child pornography as victims of past child sex abuse in other actual cases.
Bourgeois pleaded guilty in August, telling the court what he had told the agents who searched his house — that he collected child pornography to keep from sexually molesting his own three daughters.
Upon his release from prison, Bourgeois will have to register as a sex offender, wherever he resides, following his release from prison.
