A 28-year-old Silver Spring man admitted Monday to using a PlayStation video game console and electronic apps such as FaceTime and Skype to try to coerce children into sending him sexually explicit images of themselves.
Clarence Henry Andrews pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt to producing child pornography through the scheme, in which he tried to solicit photos from at least eight children younger than 16 years old and was successful in obtaining images and videos from at least one—an 11-year-old boy in Georgia.
Federal prosecutors said Andrews communicated with the boy in March 2015 through PlayStation and other apps as well as by text message and through phone calls. Andrews enticed the boy to take and send explicit images and videos by telling the boy he would send him a copy of the video game Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare in exchange for the images. Andrews also invoked the Bible and the Ten Commandments to try to convince the boy to send him the images, prosecutors said.
Andrews used similar means to attempt to convince other children to produce sexually explicit images and videos between 2013 and 2015, according to court documents.
Andrews also admitted in federal court that between April 2013 and October 2014 he abused an 8- to 9-year-old girl and a 7- to 8-year-old boy at a home in Olney. Prosecutors said he befriended the Olney family at church, and the family invited him to their home on several occasions. On one occasion he gave the girl cash to pull down her pants and then touched her, on another occasion he inappropriately touched the boy and photographed him inside a downstairs bathroom. Andrews agreed to plead guilty to charges related to this case in Montgomery County Circuit Court, according to the federal plea agreement.
Andrews was previously convicted of a fourth-degree sex offense in 2010 in Prince George’s County Circuit Court after he abused a 9-year-old boy in the bathroom of a Laurel church. After that conviction he was required to register as a sex offender.
In the federal case, Andrews faces a sentence of between 20 to 30 years in prison followed by lifetime supervised release. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 12.
