According to a press release from the U.S. Attorneys for the Western District of Wisconsin, 32 year old Beloit resident, Everett Wescott, is charged with two offenses involving the sexual exploitation of a minor in an indictment returned on August 24, 2022, by a federal grand jury sitting in Madison. The indictment charges Wescott with transporting a minor across state lines with the intent that the minor engage in any sexual activity, for which a person can be charged with a criminal offense under Wisconsin state law; namely second degree sexual assault of a child. The indictment alleges that he transported the minor from Illinois to Wisconsin on March 19, 2021. The indictment also charges Wescott with using the minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction of such conduct. The indictment alleges that he used an iPhone to produce the child pornography between January 2020 and September 2021.
The indictment was unsealed following Wescott’s arrest on Friday, September 2, in Beloit by FBI agents and officers with the Beloit Police Department. He was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Madison that day and remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing, which is scheduled for Friday, September 9, at 9:30 a.m.
If convicted, Wescott faces a mandatory minimum penalty of 10 years and a maximum of life in federal prison on the charge of transporting a minor across state lines and a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years on the production of child pornography charge. The charges against him are the result of an investigation by the Beloit Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Taylor Kraus is handling the prosecution.