Aurora man who used social media app to sexually exploit several children handed 34-year federal prison sentence

AURORA, Ill. — An Aurora man will spend more than 30 years in federal prison for coercing young girls into sending him nude photos under the threat of violence.

Richard Barnett, a 46-year-old Aurora resident, has been sentenced to 34 years in federal prison for sexually exploiting several victims using the now-defunct social media app “Musical.ly,” Andrew Boutros, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, announced Thursday.

According to prosecutors, Barnett, who pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges earlier this year, has been in custody since his arrest in 2017, when the case against him first began.

Prosecutors said Barnett would pose as a 12 or 13-year-old while using the Musical.ly app to contact his victims, requesting, and sometimes even demanding, that they send him sexually explicit photos.

Musical.ly was a video-sharing social media application that later turned into TikTok in 2018.

While communicating with the victims, who were mostly between 9 and 13 years of age, prosecutors said Barnett would threaten some of them with physical harm if they did not comply with his demands.

During one case, Barnett told one of his victims that he would kidnap, assault, and murder her if she did not comply.

“Barnett remorselessly used these girls as objects to be employed in furtherance of his sexual gratification, inflicting trauma that will forever impact his victims’ lives,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Chapman argued in the government’s sentencing recommendation. “He threatened his victims, humiliated them, degraded them, and viciously attacked any sense of self-esteem or confidence that stood in his way.”

Barnett’s sentence was handed down by Judge John Robert Blakey on Tuesday, who also ordered that the sentence be followed by a lifetime of court-supervised release.

Anyone who believes they are a victim of sexual exploitation is encouraged to alert the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children by logging on to www.missingkids.com or by calling 1-800-843-5678.