A Tennessee man who once carried a badge was sentenced to twenty-five years in federal prison for producing child sexual abuse material.

Johnathan Nathaniel Allen, 27, of Chattanooga, had worked as a sheriff’s deputy. U.S. District Judge Sherri A. Lydon handed down the sentence.

His method was the oldest one on the internet and still the most effective. He pretended to be a child.

Allen posed online as a 14-year-old boy named Josh. Under that name he reached children across the country and caused eight of them to produce sexual images of themselves.

The confirmed victims were in five states. South Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri and New York.

Some of them were as young as sixth grade.

The Washington Times reported the sentence on Thursday.

Two details here are worth separating out, because they are the two that make this kind of case hard to stop.

The first is the badge. A man trained in how investigations work, who knew what gets noticed and what does not, turned that knowledge on children instead of using it for them. No background check catches that, because he passed every one he was given.

The second is the persona. Allen did not have to break into anything or travel anywhere. He only had to be believable as a fourteen-year-old, and a fourteen-year-old is not a difficult thing to imitate in a text window.

Eight children in five states believed it. Nothing about a boy named Josh looks like a threat.

That is the part parents keep learning late. The danger is not a stranger in a van, and it has not been for a long time.

It is a friendly peer who is not a peer, on a platform the child was permitted to use, having a conversation that looks exactly like every other conversation on the screen.

Allen will serve his twenty-five years. The eight children carry the rest of it.