Guard at Chowchilla prison indicted for trading child sex abuse videos online
A correctional officer in Chowchilla was indicted Thursday for allegedly trading child sexual assault material with others online.
A federal grand jury handed down the indictment for receiving and distributing the child pornography against Ralph Contreras Jr., 39, of Chowchilla, who was a sergeant at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla at the time.
Contreras’s attorney, Eric Schweitzer, said his office had just begun to look into the case.
“In doing so, we keep in mind the highly technical nature of electronic data and how it may be mistakenly interpreted even by the most well-intentioned investigators,” he said.
The complaint filed in California’s Eastern District Court says Contreras admitted to investigators he liked to watch pornography depicting girls around the age of 14.
Court documents include several users of the Kik smartphone app, including Contreras, asking each other for videos and images of child sexual assault material.
Investigators said between September 2024 and January 2025 Contreras received and distributed at least one image.
Among the items discovered by investigators, there were rape scenes that depicted adult men assaulting girls as young as 6 or 8, according to court records.
Contreras was no longer employed by the prison at the time of this week’s indictment, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
If convicted, Contreras faces up to 20 years in prison with a mandatory minimum of five years in prison, and a fine up to a $250,000.
This story was originally published June 13, 2025 at 9:55 AM.
