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Hagerstown resident Jane Ellen Campbell, 35, has been sentenced to 210 months in federal prison, followed by 15 years of supervised release, for distribution of child pornography related to one of the underage victims who was preyed on by Florida man John Balch.
The Jacksonville native admitted to sexually exploiting six minors between the ages of 3 and 15 years old between 2017 and 2022, paying their mothers' to produce images and videos of them engaged in sexually explicit conduct, according to his guilty plea.
"The exploitation also included paying the victims’ mothers to perform sex acts on their prepubescent children, record the abuse, and send the files to Balch," court documents state. "Balch also admitted that he paid one of the mothers to transport her 15-year-old daughter to engage in sex acts with Balch in a hotel room."
Federal officials said that Campbell and Balch met in 2007, and in recent years, she drove various women to have commercial sex with Balch in hotels when Balch traveled to Maryland from his home in Florida.
In 2017, Balch asked Campbell multiple times to produce naked images of a minor, who was 9 years old at the time, they said. She admitted that she sent him three sexually explicit images of the girl in July 2017, and beginning in 2021, the Florida man began directly conversing with the child.
According to Campbell’s plea agreement, Balch paid Campbell $3,245, between Nov. 23, 2020, and Aug. 5, 2022.
Balch was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release, for sexual exploitation of a child after pleading guilty to abusing six minors, including prepubescent victims.
When both are released from prison, both will also have to register as a sex offender wherever they work, live, or study.
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