Gregory Jerome Lee

A Cullman County man, currently incarcerated in state prison on sex abuse charges, pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to producing child pornography involving seven minor victims.

Gregory Jerome Lee, 54, pleaded guilty to four counts of production of child pornography before U.S. District Judge Virginia Emerson Hopkins of the Northern District of Alabama. His sentencing is set for April 12.

Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Joyce White Vance of the Northern District of Alabama announced Lee’s guilty plea Thursday.

According to admissions made with his guilty plea, from September 1996 through December 2003, Lee sexually abused at least seven different minors and frequently produced images and videos depicting his exploitation of these children.

From approximately September 1996 until August 2007, Lee and his co-conspirators used secret, password-protected chat rooms to discuss their interests in and real-life sexual abuse of children and to trade child pornography, Lee admitted.

He is serving a 25-year consecutive sentence for the sodomy charge, a 25-year concurrent sentence for the child pornography charge and a seven-year concurrent sentence for the sex abuse charge. Lee was convicted of sex abuse in 2015 and the other two charges in 2007.

He will be considered for parole May 1, 2022, and his minimum release date is set for May 25, 2032, according to the Alabama Department of Corrections.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case. Trial Attorneys Amy E. Larson and Ralph Paradiso of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Fortune of the Northern District of Alabama prosecuted the case.

The abuse was uncovered by Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched by the Justice Department in May 2006. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ offices and 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, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.

Tiffeny Owens can be reached at 256-734-2131, ext. 135.