A Kentucky man admitted to he tried to receive sexually explicit images of a toddler after chatting with the baby’s father online and discussing the father’s sexual abuse of the child, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Dakota Douglas Himes, 27, of Lexington, Kentucky, was sentenced on Monday, by U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, to 18 years in prison, for attempted production of child pornography.

According to his plea agreement, from February 23 to February 27, 2019, Himes engaged in online chats with a New Jersey man who had a toddler son.

In the chats, the New Jersey man talked about abusing the toddler and discussed his preferred method of sharing sexually explicit imagery of the toddler, prompting Himes to ask if he could see “live” sexually explicit images of the toddler.

Although the New Jersey man did not create new images in response to Himes’s request, he sent Himes an image of the toddler’s genitals that had been taken earlier in the day.

In his guilty plea, Himes admitted that he attempted to receive sexually explicit images of a minor via the Internet and had previously received sexually explicit images of the minor via the Internet.

Under federal law, Himes must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence. Upon his release from prison, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for 25 years.

Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky; Michael E. Stansbury, Special Agent in Charge, FBI, Louisville Field Office; and Russell Coleman, Kentucky Attorney General, jointly announced the sentence.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI, with computer-forensic assistance from the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Melton is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecuted this case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.

Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), 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. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.