DES MOINES, IA – On March 10, 2022, United States District Court Senior Judge James E. Gritzner sentenced Andrew Scott Scanlan, age 33, formerly of Newton, to 840 months in prison for two counts of Production of Child Pornography and one count of Offense by a Registered Sex Offender announced United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal. Scanlan pleaded guilty on November 4, 2021. Following completion of his prison term, Scanlan will be required to register as a sex offender and will be on supervised release for ten additional years.
According to court documents, on multiple different dates from September 2, 2020, to January 21, 2021, Scanlan persuaded and coerced Child Victim #1 to perform sex acts on Scanlan in Newton. Scanlan video-recorded these sex acts on three different dates using his cell phone. Child Victim #1 was nine years old when Scanlan’s abuse began and Scanlan knew the age of that child. At the time Scanlan committed these Production of Child Pornography offenses, Scanlan was required by the laws of the State of Iowa to register as a sex offender. Additionally, in early 2021, Scanlan took photographs depicting child [censored]ography using his cell phone of Child Victim #2. Child Victim #2 was four years old. Investigators located the above-referenced depictions on Scanlan’s cell phone as well as additional depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct that Scanlan had obtained via the internet.
This case was investigated by the Homeland Security Investigations, the Newton Police Department, and the Jasper County Attorney’s Office. This case was prosecuted by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa as part of the United States Department of Justice’s “Project Safe Childhood” initiative, which was started in 2006 as a nationwide effort to combine law enforcement investigations and prosecutions, community action, and public awareness in order to reduce the incidence of sexual exploitation of children.
Any persons having knowledge of a child being sexually abused are encouraged to call the Iowa Sexual Abuse Hotline at 1-800-284-7821.