WASHINGTON – A Minneapolis man was sentenced today to serve 72 months in prison for sexually abusing two minor boys, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Brigadier General Kevin Jacobsen of the U.S. Air Force, Office of Special Investigations; and John Morton, Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Joshua Gardner, 29, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Ann D. Montgomery in the District of Minnesota.  In addition to his prison term, Gardner was sentenced to three years of supervised release.  Following Gardner’s prison term, he must register as a sex offender as a condition of release.

Gardner pleaded guilty on Jan. 5, 2012, to one count of abusive sexual contact of a child under the age of 12.

According to information presented at his plea hearing, Gardner sexually abused two boys under the age of 12, sometime between September 1997 and May 2002, on Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa, Japan, which as a U.S. Air Force base was in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States.  At the time of the offenses, Gardner resided in Okinawa.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.   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.

This case was prosecuted by Trial Attorney Mi Yung Park of CEOS with the assistance of Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Ueland of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota.  This case is a result of investigative efforts by the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations in Moody Air Force Base in Georgia and ICE Homeland Security Investigations in Minneapolis.