Spalding County Man Arrested for the Sexual Exploitation of Children

Griffin, GA (July 16, 2020) – On Wednesday, July 8, 2020, Spalding County resident Patrick Finnegan, 23, was charged with three counts of Sexual Exploitation of Children (Possession of Child Pornography) by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit (CEACC). GBI was assisted with the arrest of Finnegan by the Griffin Police Department.

The search warrant and arrest warrant were related to an investigation being conducted by the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit that began as a result of a report received from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) pertaining to the upload of numerous images depicting child pornography to a social media site.  

Finnegan is currently in custody at the Spalding County Jail.

This investigation is part of the ongoing effort by the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, housed within the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit, to identify those involved in the child pornography trade. The ICAC Program, created by the U. S. Department of Justice, was developed in response to the increasing number of children and teenagers using the Internet, the proliferation of child pornography, and the heightened online activity by predators searching for unsupervised contact with underage victims.

Anyone with information about other cases of child exploitation is asked to contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit at 404-270-8870.