A 29-year-old former sailor was sentenced to more than 47 years in prison for producing and receiving images of child sexual abuse through a social media app while assigned to Naval Air Station Lemoore in California, according to the Justice Department and court documents.
Christopher Jeorge Millican of Coalinga, Calif., engaged in inappropriate behavior with an 11-year-old and sexually explicit behavior with a 15-year-old from March to August 2018, according to court documents.
“Millican pursued a methodical and repetitive course of conduct, exploiting or attempting to exploit multiple minors to satisfy his own deviant sexual fantasies,” U.S. Attorney Phillip A. Talbert said in a statement.
In July 2018, a parent reported to Snapchat, a social media app, that a user, later identified as Millican, had been engaging in inappropriate communications with her 11-year-old daughter, according to the Justice Department. He had been “flirting” and repeatedly asking for pictures and location information for the child, according to the criminal complaint against Millican.
Snapchat reported the conduct to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, along with additional images and videos found on his account depicting another, then 15-year-old minor, engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He’d also communicated with four other minor girls using the alias, Taylor Fields.
Police in Hanford, Calif., traced Millican’s IP address — a numeric designation that identifies its location on the internet — to a home on NAS Lemoore, according to the complaint. Some of the messages were exchanged while Millican was deployed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman in the fall and summer of 2018.
Investigators identified one minor victim, who informed them that Millican had coerced her into creating and sending him these images.
“I’ll make sure to hunt down someone close to u since I took screenshots of ur full friends list and I might not keep everything a secret,” he wrote to the girl, according to the criminal complaint.
Naval Criminal Investigative Service executed a search warrant in December 2018 of Millican’s person, home and vehicle with investigators from the Department of Homeland Security Investigations and the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office. No additional images were found, according to court documents.
A jury found Millican guilty in July, and he was sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California. He received 47 years and six months for one count of sexual exploitation of children and one count of receipt of material involving the sexual exploitation of minors. Upon release from prison, he’ll be supervised for life.
Millican was discharged from the Navy in October 2020 while a petty officer 2nd class assigned to the Fleet Readiness Center West at NAS Lemoore, according to his official service record. An aviation machinist’s mate who enlisted in November 2014, he had previously served in Norfolk, Va., and Pensacola, Fla.
(Carlos Bongioanni/Stars and Stripes)
