A former Phoenix resident was sentenced by United States District Judge Diane J. Humetewa to 40 years in prison.

Michael Martinez, 28, now a resident of Fort Worth, Texas, pleaded guilty on March 8 to three counts of producing child pornography, involving three minors, ages 7, 5 and 3. When Martinez is released from prison, he will be on supervised release for the rest of his life.

In 2016, when Martinez was 22 years old, he lived in Phoenix in a house with Child Doe 1 (age 7). As an acquaintance of Child Doe 1’s mother, Martinez had access to Child Doe 1 and took sexually explicit pictures and videos of the minor in January 2016, according to the United States Attorney's Office District of Arizona.

Later in 2016, Martinez moved residences and lived with Child Doe 2 (age 5) and Child Doe 3 (age 3), because he was a roommate of the minors’ mother. In this house, Martinez acted as a babysitter where he had access to the minors and took sexually explicit pictures and videos of both of them in November 2016, the United States Attorney's Office District of Arizona reports.

Further, Martinez admitted engaging in sex acts with the three minors.

In 2022, Martinez was arrested in Texas where he had moved in 2017 after these events.

“The pain and harm caused to these victims is irreparable,” Gary Restaino, U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, stated in a press release. “The court’s sentence sends a strong message of deterrence to those who seek to hurt children.”

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.

Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, 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.

Click here for more about Project Safe Childhood.

The case was investigated by the Phoenix Police Department and FBI (Phoenix Division, Dallas Division, and FBI Headquarters). Assistant U.S. Attorneys Gayle L. Helart and Brett A. Day, District of Arizona, Phoenix, handled the prosecution.