ROANOKE, Va. (WFXR) – The US Department of Justice Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Virginia announced a former Virginia Tech professor has been sentenced to five years in prison for possession of child pornography.
According to the DOJ, 51-year-old Michael Horning of Christiansburg pled guilty in September 2024 to one count of Information charging him with knowingly possessing one or more visual depictions of minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct, including prepubescent minors and minors who have not yet attained 12 years of age.
Horning is a former professor of communications at Virginia Tech. Court records showed that he used peer-to-peer filesharing software to download child pornography. Last week he was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison.
Court documents revealed that from 2009 to 2021, Horning downloaded child pornography using the peer-to-peer filesharing program, Freenet.
In December 2021, 663 images, fourteen videos depicting child pornography, and other child sex abuse material were seized by law enforcement. This included thirty-eight images, and one video depicted infants or toddlers, as well as one video depicted sadomasochism, the DOJ said.