Courland man to spend 20 years behind bars for child sex crimes

COURLAND, Miss. (WCBI) – A Courland man will spend the next 20 years behind bars for child sex crimes.
31-year-old Benjamin Wilkes was sentenced in Oxford Federal Court today for transporting child sexual abuse materials using social media apps.
Wilkes, who was a former kindergarten assistant, had images and videos of children as young as four years old engaging in sexual conduct and would store the images in a social media cloud.
According to court documents, he had a number of “up-skirt” images of children from his church community.
After his 20-year sentence, the man will have 10 years of supervised release and will be required to register a sex offender.
This case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Parker S. King prosecuted the case.