JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — * The video above is from a previous related story.
Retired Jacksonville school teacher Michael Gillis, 65, was sentenced Thursday to five years and ten months in federal prison for possessing images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of young children, according to a press release from United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida.
Chief US District Judge Timothy J. Corrigan also ordered Gillis to serve a 10-year term of supervised release, register as a sex offender and forfeit his computer media, the press release continued. Gillis had pleaded guilty on April 27.
According to court documents and information provided in court, FBI agents were investigating individuals who were using a particular online network to share child sexual abuse materials, according to the press release. The investigation revealed that Gillis had accessed this network from his home.
On February 2, FBI agents executed a search warrant at Gillis’s home, the press release said. Gillis was home at the time and admitted he had been accessing child sexual abuse materials using the internet for the past 15 years, and that he had viewed materials depicting children as young as three-years-old.
Gillis also said he viewed these images and videos while employed as a schoolteacher and would fantasize about touching children inappropriately but claimed that he had never acted on it, the press release said. He acknowledged he would continue to seek out these materials online because he would have “a hard time” stopping this behavior because it is an “urge.”
During the execution of the search warrant, FBI seized several computers belonging to Gillis containing at least 2,000 images and 150 videos depicting infants, toddlers and other young children being sexually abused, according to the press release.
The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to fight child sexual exploitation and abuse.