LOS ANGELES – A former Redondo Seashore resident was sentenced at the moment to 324 months in federal jail for focusing on women on the web and attractive them to have interaction in masochistic abuse for his sexual gratification.
Matthew Christian Locher, 32, was sentenced by United States District Decide Dolly M. Gee, who at at the moment’s listening to stated, Locher was “a mother or father’s worst nightmare” and was a person who dedicated “monstrous acts.” Decide Gee additionally ordered Locher to pay $25,209 in restitution to his victims and ordered him positioned on lifetime supervised launch as soon as he’s launched from jail.
Locher pleaded responsible in August 2022 to 1 rely of sexual exploitation and tried sexual exploitation of a kid for the aim of manufacturing a sexually express visible depiction.
From November 2020 to Could 2021, Locher focused women affected by psychological well being points, together with despair, suicidal ideas, and consuming problems. Throughout web conversations, Locher groomed his victims to have interaction in self-mutilation and instructed a sufferer fighting an consuming dysfunction to starve herself, ordering her to movie herself reducing her physique when she disobeyed him.
Locher enticed two of the minor victims to ship Locher photos and movies of themselves committing acts of self-harm, which included reducing their breasts with razor blades.
Locher enticed a 3rd sufferer, who was 12 years previous, to run away from her residence in Ohio and journey to California to have interaction in unlawful sexual exercise with him. Particularly, Locher inspired the sufferer to kill her mother and father and set her household’s home on fireplace, at which level he would decide her up, deliver her to California, and make her his “slave.” This sufferer started a visit to California after setting a fireplace in her household’s residence in an unsuccessful try and kill her mother and father.
Quickly after federal authorities executed a search warrant at his residence, Locher relocated to Indiana in the summertime of 2021. Following his arrest in Indianapolis in January 2022, federal authorities transported Locher to California. He has been in federal custody since then.
“[Locher’s] victims are actual individuals – actual women who turned to the web to hunt assist with their struggles with anorexia, schizophrenia, and despair, and tragically fell into [Locher’s] fingers,” prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum. “[Locher] knew he was speaking to children, wished to be speaking to children, and knew children have been, actually, harming themselves at his urging.”
The FBI, Homeland Safety Investigations, the Los Angeles Police Division, the Springfield (Ohio) Police Division, the Shelby County (Tennessee) Sheriff’s Workplace, and the New York Metropolis Police Division investigated this matter.
Assistant United States Lawyer Chelsea Norell of the Violent and Organized Crime Part prosecuted this case.