A Towamencin man has pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges stemming from a nine-month investigation by the Towamencin Township Police Department into the online sexual abuse of children.
As part of an open guilty plea agreement with prosecutors, 55-year-old Sean Dallas pleaded guilty on Tuesday to three counts of knowingly permitting a child to engage in a prohibited sex act and three felony counts of unlawful contact with a minor.
In exchange for his plea, the following charges were dropped:
An open guilty plea agreement means that Dallas has no sentencing agreement with prosecutors, and the sentencing decision will be made solely by Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Henry Hilles III. Court records indicate Judge Hilles has ordered a pre-sentencing investigation, and no date has been set for sentencing at this time.
Dallas faces up to seven years in prison per count of unlawful contact with a minor.
According to the criminal complaint, the investigation began in October 2019 after police received a referral from Childline regarding a man — identified as Dallas — engaging in inappropriate communications with underage males. Over the weeks and months that followed, investigators executed a series of search warrants on Dallas’ iPhone, iPad and social media accounts, uncovering a series of sexually explicit conversations that Dallas had with boys ranging between 11-and-16-years-old, police said.
Investigators said Dallas would communicate with boys via Instagram and Snapchat. When the search warrant was executed on Dallas’ Instagram account, detectives said they recovered thousands of images and videos, some of which included teens and pre-teens in various stages of undress and others of underage males engaging in sexual activity, the report states.
Also detailed in the results of the search warrant were multiple conversations in which Dallas allegedly asked underage boys if they wanted to “trade pics” or urged the boys to turn their cameras on and get an undressed, police said. In one case, Dallas agreed to purchase a sex toy for a 14-year-old boy, the report states.
When questioned by police, Dallas initially stated that he was unsure if any of the males he communicated with were minors, though he later insinuated that he knew some of the males were minors, according to the affidavit of probable cause.
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