BRUNSWICK, Ga. – A 52-year-old Jesup man was charged Friday by criminal complaint on a charge of sexual exploitation of a minor.
Stephen Keating made his first appearance in court Friday morning and was being held without bail.
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His detention hearing will be held Monday.
"Child exploitation, often over the Internet, has reached epidemic proportions," United States Attorney Edward J. Tarver said in a news release. "This disturbing development demands we act with the full force of the department and its many law enforcement partners. We will settle for nothing less than reducing incidents of child exploitation and bringing justice to those who would steal the innocence of our nation's children."
"HSI will never relent in our efforts to identify and arrest child predators who terrorize and exploit the most vulnerable members of our community," said Brock D. Nicholson, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations Atlanta office. "These monsters living among us inflict the most unimaginable harm upon the innocent to satisfy their perverse desires, and we will continue to find them and bring them to justice."
The charge against Keating came out of an investigation led by ICE HSI with assistance from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations in Savannah, CBP Air and Marine Operations in Jacksonville, Fla., and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.