Ray Dwight Sluss Sentenced to 17 Years in Federal Prison for Receipt of Child Pornography   GREENEVILLE, TN — On Sept. 11, 2014, Ray Dwight Sluss, 49, of Johnson City, Tenn., was sentenced to serve 210 months in prison by the Honorable Leon Jordan, Senior U.S. District Judge. Sluss pleaded guilty in February 2014 to a federal indictment charging him with the receipt and possession of child pornography. Upon his release from prison, Sluss will remain on federal supervised release for the remainder of his life. He is also subject to numerous special conditions of release which restrict his access to children and the Internet. He has remained in custody since July 2013. Sluss, purchased polygraph counter-measures while he was on supervised release by the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole for a previous offense. During a search of his home, state court probation officers and other law enforcement officers found more than 18,000 images of child sexual abuse on external hard drives which were concealed in his home. He physically attacked some of the law enforcement officers. The indictment and subsequent conviction of Sluss was the result of an investigation conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole, and Washington County Sheriff’s Office. Assistant United States Attorney Helen Smith represented the United States in the prosecution. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc. For more information about Internet safety education, please visit www.usdoj.gov/psc and click on the tab “resources.”

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