A Greentown man who pled guilty last month for his role in a child pornography and child exploitation case was sentenced to 4 years in the Indiana Department of Correction.
That sentence against 24-year-old Austin Hewitt will be spent between in-home detention and supervised probation, according to court documents.
Hewitt was originally arrested in November 2023 on five felony charges of child exploitation and five felony charges of possession of child pornography after police say they located over 600 videos on his devices depicting boys as young as 7 years old engaging in sexual activity, per court documents.
His charges stem from an Oct. 8, 2023, cyber tip that was generated by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and court documents indicate officials with the Kokomo Police Department began investigating the tip after learning that a Dropbox account used to share the sexual content came back to a local account.
That account, according to police, was later determined to be Hewitt’s.
On Nov. 15, 2023, authorities initiated a search warrant on Hewitt’s Greentown residence, a probable cause affidavit filed in the case stated, and police reportedly seized several devices they believed to be related to the investigation.
They also took Hewitt into custody without incident.
During an interview with investigators, Hewitt stated he did not watch pornography but that he was part of a “pornography addiction group” in college, according to court documents.
Hewitt then explained his role in the group was to reportedly help those addicted to pornography overcome their addictions by providing them with “amateur porn” with “real” people instead of more traditional pornography, court documents state.
However, per his interview with police, Hewitt told investigators he “might have downloaded a bad file containing child pornography,” though he explained he never viewed what he downloaded, according to the affidavit.
Authorities then reportedly confronted Hewitt with the alleged child pornography they found during a warranted search of his cell phone, including text messages referring to wanting videos of “young boys,” court documents allege.
It was at that time that Hewitt reportedly asked for a lawyer.