Vancouver man sentenced to four years in child pornography case

A Vancouver man was sentenced Monday to four years in prison for possessing thousands of images of child pornography and pressuring a 13-year-old girl into sending him nude photos.

Alan Donald Higgs, 62, pleaded guilty July 30 in Clark County Superior Court to three counts of first-degree possession of depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct and one count of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. Judge Bernard Veljacic issued the sentence after a joint recommendation by the defense and prosecution.

Higgs messaged a girl, who lives in Maine, in October 2016 and asked her to send nude photos, according to an affidavit of probable cause. Following the correspondence, he received multiple images.

Facebook reported the activity to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Through a search warrant, investigators examined messages exchanged on the social media site. They also obtained Higgs’ Google Drive cloud storage account, finding child pornography images and messages between March 2016 and June 2017, according to the affidavit.

Investigators seized five digital storage cards after a search of Higgs’ residence. Higgs told detectives there was child pornography on the cards but that he pulled them from social media sites with the intent of reporting the illegal activity to police, according to a separate probable cause affidavit.

One storage card included roughly 2,850 images of child pornography, and another contained 77 visuals, the affidavit said. All of the images had been deleted from the cards but were recovered. Investigators also found Higgs used a phone to record video of child pornography from a computer screen.

After Higgs’ guilty pleas, a pre-sentence investigation report by the state Department of Corrections recommended the four-year sentence, leading to the joint recommendation by attorneys in the case.

Higgs did not offer a statement during Monday’s hearing.