Hawthorne man sentenced to prison for sexual relationship with girl he met on Snapchat

Calling it a case of "truly horrible conduct," a federal judge on Tuesday sentenced an Alachua County man who groomed and sexually exploited a 13-year-old girl to more than 26 years in prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Allen Winsor sentenced Justin Ray Crosby, 25, of Hawthorne, after Crosby pleaded guilty to felony charges of production and distribution of child pornography. He also was ordered to pay $20,000 in restitution.

“You have truly horrible conduct here,” the judge said. “You have a young person, an adult but still a young person, taking advantage of a young child in a horrible way. This is a difficult case.”

The FBI said the girl, who was 12 at the time, was among a group of young girls selling sexually explicit images of themselves over Snapchat and Crosby once picked her up in his car at her charter middle school in Gainesville for a sexual encounter.

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During Tuesday's hearing, Crosby, restrained by chains and shackles, remained mostly silent. He responded politely when the judge asked questions.

The young girl was not in the courtroom.

Crosby’s lawyer, federal public defender Darren Johnson, said Crosby was heavily using marijuana and addicted to oxycodone when the crimes occurred involving the 12-year-old. He said Crosby was experiencing mental health problems because he had recently separated from the mother of his child and had been living alone. Johnson asked the judge to sentence Crosby to no more than 18 years in prison, citing Crosby’s own age and his lack of prior criminal record.

The prosecutor said Crosby, who was arrested in May, deserved to spend decades behind bars. The lead prosecutor, Frank Williams, urged the judge to sentence Crosby to 30 years to life.

“This broken and vulnerable 12-year-old girl was willing to offer herself for the sexual pleasure of others,” Williams said. “Mr. Crosby groomed her and exploited her.”

The FBI launched its investigation in July 2022 after the social media service Snapchat reported one of its users, a minor later identified as the victim in Crosby’s case living in Alachua County, was sending a sexually explicit image of herself. Investigators searched her Snapchat account and found evidence that she was selling pornographic content of herself to men using the Cash App payment service.

The girl, who wasn’t charged with a crime, initially denied to investigators that she had met anyone for sex then – after agents found another Snapchat account she was using to communicate with Crosby – admitted she had lied. Using the name “Casey,” Crosby was chatting with her as far back as January 2022 under an alias that referred to himself as a “sugar daddy."

The FBI said Crosby solicited and received explicit images from the girl and later recorded a video in April 2022 of himself having sex with the girl in his car. Agents said he sent the video to at least one other person on Snapchat. They said Crosby drove to Gainesville to pick up the girl for their encounters, including at least once when he picked her up near the office at her charter middle school in Gainesville, the Caring and Sharing Learning School.

“She is angry and also confused because she is coming to terms that she was being taken advantage of,” said her therapist, Jamie Saunders, according to court records. “She is also grieving the loss of what she believed was a relationship.”

Crosby’s legal troubles may not have ended Tuesday. He is a suspect in a separate sextortion case under investigation by the Clay County Sheriff's Office, federal court records show. In those cases, defendants are suspected of tricking victims into paying them, sending sexually explicit images or performing sexual favors over threats to embarrass victims publicly. No state criminal charges have been filed against Crosby in that investigation.

— This story was produced by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. Contact the reporter at erina.anwar@ufl.edu.

This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Hawthorne man sentenced for sexual relationship with Gainesville girl