Samantha Pidde, Clinton Herald, Iowa –
CLINTON A Clinton man pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, aggravated misdemeanors, on Wednesday.
Raymond J. Reves, 49, was ordered to register as a sex offender and was released from the Clinton County Jail into the supervision of the Iowa Department of Correction, after his sentencing Wednesday. He had served 69 days in the county jail.
For each count, Reves was sentenced to serve two years with the DOC, according to court documents. His time was suspended and he was ordered to serve two years of supervised probation, for each count, with the DOC. Clinton County Attorney Mike Wolf said that Reves has no prior criminal history and was very open and pleaded guilty with no concessions to his plea. He added that Reves will participate in the probation and receive treatment through the DOC.
Due to the nature of the charges, Reves will also serve 10 years of parole, for each count, running consecutive to the four years of probation. The parole for the two counts will run concurrently with each other. Once the probation and parole is completed, Reves will remain registered as a sex offender for another 10 years. He also was fined $625 for each count and must pay a $250 civil penalty for each count.
Reves was arrested Nov. 10, as part of an investigation into a cyber tip from the Internet Crimes Against Children’s Task Force that someone was allegedly uploading images of child pornography onto the Internet and saving them under a Yahoo profile. According to the court affidavit, he admitted to using the Internet to find, download and save images that depicted prohibited acts. Reves surrendered a storage device to the Clinton police and thousands of deleted images of children younger than 18 years old in different stages of undress were retrieved from the device. The storage device also contained eight images depicting minors involved in prohibited sexual acts, according to court records.
Before his arrest, Reves had served as the resident manager of the Victory Center for four years. The Victory Center Board terminated him once he was arrested.
Reves initially was charged with eight counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, for each of the eight images found. However, when formal charges were filed, he was only charged with two counts. At that time, Wolf said the number of charges was reduced due to an Iowa court case that requires authorities to not look at the number of images Reves allegedly had downloaded. The counts instead related to the number of electronic storage devices Reves allegedly had.
Reves pleaded not guilty to the charges at a Dec. 21 pre-trial conference and a trial date was set for Jan. 30. During the final pre-tail conference Wednesday, Reves pleaded guilty to both counts and received immediate sentencing.
