U.S. District Judge John C. Coughnour on Tuesday sentenced to 10 years in prison a 45-year-old Auburn man who had used peer-to-peer software to share more than 2,800 images of sexual assaults of children, announced U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran.

Jeremy James Cherry was convicted in King County Superior Court in 2001 for rape of a child and attempted possession of child pornography. He served eight years in prison and participated in sex offender treatment.

In March 2018, however, a Seattle Police Department detective identified Cherry as the owner of a computer that shared more than 2800 images of child pornography between August 2017 and March 2018. At the sentencing hearing, Coughnour said he was imposing the 10-year sentence and 10 years of supervised release after prison because of Cherry’s prior, hands-on offense against children.

According to court records, Cherry, then 27, was acting as an in-home caregiver for three young children when one of them disclosed the sexual molestation. Cherry subsequently pleaded guilty to rape of a child and to attempted possession of child pornography, for which he served eight years in prison.

Cherry admitted that after sex offender treatment between 2010 and 2013, and once he had completed his community supervision, he began seeking out child pornography again.

Cherry was identified as part of Operation Broken Heart, which resulted in the arrests of more than 2,300 suspected, online child sex offenders during a three-month, nationwide operation conducted by 61 Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. During March, April and May of 2018, the ICAC task forces investigated more the 25,200 complaints of technology-facilitated crimes against children.

The Seattle Police Department and the Department of Homeland Security investigated the case, and Special Assistant United States Attorney Cecelia Gregson prosecuted it.