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Donald J. Jones III, 48, of Pemberton, was convicted last May of interstate travel to engage in illicit sexual acts with a minor, attempted aggravated sexual abuse, enticement of a minor and distribution of child pornography.
Jones was convicted in New Jersey in 1993 of sexually assaulting a girl under age 13, and then again in 2004 and 2009 on lesser charges of child endangerment.
Federal agents and the Rhode Island State Police arrested Jones on April 8, 2011, after he traveled by bus from Philadelphia to Providence, expecting to meet with an 8-year-old girl and her father.
Jones communicated for nearly three weeks via the Internet and by phone with a person he believed was the girl’s father — who, in fact, were federal agents assigned to the Rhode Island State Police Computer Crimes Unit/Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force.
“As prosecutors, we have no higher calling than to aid parents in protecting their children,” Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter F. Neronha said earlier today. “Accordingly, I am very pleased with the life sentence … which ensures that a remorseless, recidivist pedophile has been brought to justice.
“Spending the rest of his life in prison ensures that he will never, ever harm another child.”
In addition, Col. Steven G. O’Donnell, Superintendent of the Rhode Island State Police said the sentence “sends a clear message to others that may choose to follow in the same path he did.”
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