Youth Football League President Arrested on Child Pornography Charges

While investigating child pornography on a file sharing network, law enforcement linked an IP address to the Gonzales home. After searching his computer, authorities allege that they discovered that Gonzales downloaded approximately 30 files containing child pornography via the file sharing network. He allegedly told law enforcement that he burned the videos onto a DVD to watch with his wife, Carey Gonzales. She was also arrested and charged with possession of child pornography.

Frederick Gonzales served as a board member of the football league and volunteered with the group for many years before being elected league president. The league oversees approximately 5,000 players across the state, ranging from 7 to 14 years old. The league’s newly-instated president, Jim Summers, told law enforcement that Gonzales passed multiple background checks that were conducted as recently as 2011 and 2012. He said there were no indications that Gonzales was involved in anything inappropriate.

After the allegations surfaced, the football league removed him from his position. Carey Gonzales was placed on paid administrative leave from her job as a teaching assistant in a kindergarten class at Montezuma Elementary School. The couple has two children who were taken into state custody upon their parents’ arrest. Law enforcement officials have stated that there is no evidence that these children were depicted in any of the pornographic images. The children have since been released to a relative.

We do not know the details of the alleged admissions made by Gonzales so it is difficult at this time to comment on his guilt or innocence. Our firm has handled many child pornography cases in Georgia that stemmed from files that were downloaded using file sharing networks—most notably Limewire, Frostwire, eMule, etc. Many of these clients were innocent as these are often accidental downloads. Unfortunately, when an arrest is made in one of these cases it takes months for us to be able to conduct our investigation and review of the computer evidence. Very often, our examination of the client’s hard drive results in the discovery of evidence that proves that a download was accidental. For more information on how we conduct these examinations, please click here.