Tewksbury man pleads guilty to child rape, extortion charges

WOBURN, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) – A Tewksbury man accused of deceiving young victims into posing nude over the Internet has pleaded guilty to child rape, extortion, and numerous other charges.

Thomas Hutchinson, 21, pleaded guilty in connection with two cases in which he faces numerous charges, including rape of a child by force, assault with intent to rape a child, indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, attempted extortion, posing a child in a state of sexual conduct, dissemination of visual matter of a child in sexual conduct and carrying a dangerous weapon.

A judge sentenced Hutchinson to 10 to 15 years in prison with 15 years of probation to follow.

The allegations came to the attention of authorities in early 2011. Around that time, a then 15-year-old girl using MyYearbook.com had online contact with a person, later identified to be Hutchinson.

Hutchinson allegedly posed as a girl named "Brittany" and offered to introduce the victim to a connection in the modeling business. Hutchinson then took up the screen name Sexybeast5655@aim.com and posed as a modeling agent. He then asked for naked pictures and videos.

Once the victim complied, he threatened to post the images if she didn't have sex with his friend, authorities said. Hutchinson then allegedly threatened to rape her if she refused to meet his friend in person or if she told police.

According to police, Hutchinson then posed as the friend and drove to the victim's neighborhood, made her get in his car, and forced her to perform a sex act.

Following an investigation, which was launched in May 2011, authorities seized Hutchinson's computer and learned he used the same methods on other victims. On the computer, they found numerous photos and videos which were pornographic in nature.

Police said Hutchinson's victims were mainly female and appeared to be under the age of 18.

Hutchinson was arraigned Dec. 8, 2011 and ordered held on $5,000 cash bail with the conditions that he remain on GPS monitoring with a curfew, abide by all restraining orders, have no direct or indirect contact with the victim and any witnesses in the case, not use computers or any device which has the ability to connect to the Internet, surrender his passport and not leave Massachusetts, have no unsupervised contact with any child under the age of 18, including online contact, and report to probation once a week.

Hutchinson was subsequently indicted on 46 additional counts on March 29, 2012.

Cox Media Group