News Releases

California man sentenced to more than 6 years for molesting child in Bangladesh

SANTA ANA, Calif. - An Orange County, Calif., man who formerly worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been sentenced to 78 months in jail for engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a boy while he working for USAID in Bangladesh.

William Newton Rudd, 67, of Fullerton, Calif., was also sentenced to 10 years of supervised release following his prison term and ordered to pay $15,000 in restitution to the victims. In Oct. 2009, Rudd pleaded guilty to one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Regional Security Office of the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The plea agreement states that while working in Bangladesh for a USAID-funded development program, Rudd engaged in inappropriate sexual contact with a boy under the age of 16. According to court documents, the investigation into Rudd's activities turned up reports of abuse of additional victims. After a search warrant was executed at Rudd's Bangladesh hotel room in 2004, he traveled to the country of Togo, where he was arrested and escorted back to the United States.

This case was brought as part of the Department of Justice's Project Safe Childhood and ICE's Operation Predator, national initiatives targeting those who sexually exploit children. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.

As part of ICE's Operation Predator, the public is encouraged to report suspected child predators and suspicious activity by contacting ICE's 24-hour toll-free hotline at 1-866-DHS-2ICE; and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) at 1-800-843-5678 or http://www.cybertipline.com.

The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney James Silver of CEOS, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne Gannon of the Central District of California.