Ex-Rochester firefighter sentenced to prison for encouraging youth to send explicit photos

A former Rochester firefighter was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for encouraging young men to send explicit photos of themselves.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Wolford on Wednesday sentenced Brett Marrapese, 32, to 210 months in prison for distributing and receiving child pornography.

“In total, Marrapese received more than 600 images of child pornography that he received from others over the Internet,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Ross said in a press release. “He also posed as a teenage boy, causing minors to create and send him sexually explicit images. Some of the images that Marrapese distributed and received depicted violence and sexual abuse of children, infants and toddlers.”

Marrapese pleaded guilty to the crimes in June. He faced 30 to 40 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines, which are non-mandatory.

He was accused of communicating with at least 110 minors, including two children identified by the FBI as victims, and coercing them into producing and sending child pornography.

Marrapese had been a firefighter for nearly a decade and used fire computers for some communications. He was investigated by New York State Police in 2016 for similar crimes, but the investigation did not lead to an arrest, records show.

Marrapese suffered childhood trauma, according to a court filing from his attorney.

“I find it almost impossible to sleep at night when I think about how wrong all my actions were,” Marrapese wrote in a letter to the court. “I feel devastated by the lasting harm I have caused to the victims, whether it is psychologically destroying their ability to trust people and it has long-term consequences. . . My actions disgust me and I don’t want to be that person.”

— Gary Craig – veteran reporter with the Democrat and Chronicle covering courts, crime and more. You can contact Craig at [email protected]. He is the author of two books, including “Seven Million: A Policeman, a Priest, an IRA Soldier and the Still Unsolved Rochester Brink Robbery.“

This article originally appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Ex-firefighter convicted of encouraging youth to send explicit photos