David Michael Navarro, 38, a former Puget Sound Naval Shipyard employee and Belfair Elementary School PTA president, was sentenced Sept. 8 in U.S. District Court in Tacoma to 23 years in prison and lifetime of supervised release for four child pornography offenses, announced U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan.
Navarro was arrested in August 2013, after investigators traced a video posted on the internet to him. The video showed the rape of an 8-year-old child. Navarro pleaded guilty in April 2014 to two counts of production of child pornography, one count of distribution of child pornography and one count of possession of child pornography.
At sentencing U.S. District Judge Benjamin H. Settle said, “it is almost impossible to conjure up any offense more serious than what you’ve done. Words don’t exist in the English language to describe this. Your sentence pales in comparison to the lifetime of nightmares and psychological harm your victims will suffer.”
“This defendant is a dangerous sexual predator,” said Durkan. “He preyed on children in a horrific fashion, even recording the sexual assault of a child in the hallway of an elementary school after a PTA event. We are safer because of this much deserved prison sentence.”
According to the facts in the plea agreement, between November of 2011 and May of 2013, Navarro produced multiple videos of himself raping and molesting a young child. Some of the videos seized from the defendant also showed a second young victim, and one video depicted Navarro engaged in sexually explicit conduct while seated next to an unidentified child on an airplane. Law enforcement analysis revealed more than 700 images of child pornography and 157 videos of child pornography on Navarro’s electronic devices including cameras, computers, thumb drives, and smartphones. Navarro admits that he shared much of the child pornography he produced over the Internet, trading for other images of child pornography.
Investigators also found videos showing Navarro masturbating in public and taking surreptitious photos aimed at women’s underwear in various public settings such as school libraries or at a car repair shop. The people victimized in the photos were unaware Navarro was engaged in lewd conduct.
The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Marci Ellsworth. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by United States Attorney’s Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
