Jacksonville, FL — The former JSO officer accused of paying a woman in Texas for pornography involving that woman’s young child has now pleaded guilty.
WOKV obtained the plea agreement for Michael Eugene Williams, which shows he’s admitting to one of the eight charges he faced. Williams is pleading guilty to sex trafficking of a child, for which he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison, but could get life. Williams had also been charged with sexual exploitation of children, three counts of sexual exploitation of children, and three counts of activities constituting or containing child pornography, but the plea agreement shows those charges will be dropped at the time of his sentencing.
The complaint was filed against Williams in mid-October 2016, with an indictment coming less than a week later.
Prosecutors say Williams paid a woman in Texas hundreds of dollars for explicit images and videos of child porn involving her daughter. Court records show Williams would tell the woman what sexual things to do to the child, who was initially identified as three-years-old and is now listed as four-years-old in the new documents. He would also engage in explicit chats with the woman, and investigators found some of the transactions even took place after Williams’ home was first searched by police.
The plea agreement shows Williams solicited the Texas woman for the photos and videos between February 2016 and September 2016. The investigation started after a cyber tip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was passed along to JSO’s Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Williams left JSO for "personal reasons" in 2011, after almost 17 years on the force. The plea agreement says some of his retirement income from his time with JSO was used to pay for the photos and videos of the sexual abuse of the child.
In all, investigators found 453 images and five videos of child pornography on Williams’ electronic devices, with many of the files showing “graphic sexual abuse of infants and toddlers”. Williams also exchanged 337 messages with the girl’s mother, almost all about the four-year-old.
As soon as investigators learned of the sexual abuse, the child was removed from the home.
