South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson announced the arrest of Jeffrey Lon Winget, 63, of Charleston, S.C., and Donald Charles King, 71, of Bluffton, S.C., on five total charges connected to the sexual exploitation of minors. Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force investigators with the Charleston Police Department and Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office made the arrests in these unrelated cases. Investigators with the Attorney General’s Office, Mount Pleasant Police Department, U.S. Marshals Service, and Homeland Security Investigations, all also members of the state’s ICAC Task Force, assisted with these investigations.
Investigators received a CyberTipline report from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) which led them to both Winget and King. Investigators state King distributed and possessed child sexual abuse material and Winget possessed files of child sexual abuse material.
Winget was arrested on March 1, 2023. He is charged with three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, third degree (§16-15-410), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment on each count.
King was arrested on March 3, 2023. He is charged with one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, second degree (§16-15-405), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment on each count; and one count of sexual exploitation of a minor, third degree (§16-15-410), a felony offense punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment.
Both of these cases will be prosecuted by the Attorney General’s Office.
Attorney General Wilson stressed all defendants are presumed innocent unless and until they are proven guilty in a court of law.
* Child sexual abuse material, or CSAM, is a more accurate reflection of the material involved in these heinous and abusive crimes. “Pornography” can imply the child was a consenting participant. Globally, the term child pornography is being replaced by CSAM for this reason
