{"id":35467,"date":"2026-04-15T14:29:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T19:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/?p=35467"},"modified":"2026-04-15T14:29:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T19:29:28","slug":"crawford-county-man-sentenced-to-170-months-in-prison-for-grooming-sex-w-minor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/local-news\/35467-crawford-county-man-sentenced-to-170-months-in-prison-for-grooming-sex-w-minor\/","title":{"rendered":"Crawford County Man Sentenced to 170 Months in Prison for Grooming, Sex w\/Minor"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pdfprnt-buttons pdfprnt-buttons-post pdfprnt-top-right\"><a href=\"javascript: window.print()\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-print\" target=\"_self\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/print.png\" alt=\"image_print\" title=\"Print Content\" \/><span class=\"pdfprnt-button-title pdfprnt-button-print-title\">Print<\/span><\/a><\/div><p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey on Wednesday sentenced a man to 170 months in prison for grooming and engaging in illegal sexual contact with a minor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nathaniel Rod Gibson, 34, gave the victim a phone and sent her via more than 18,996 text messages from March 10, 2023, to Sept. 6, 2023, while grooming her with romantic and flirtatious statements. Gibson also told the victim to delete the messages so that her mother would not find them. In June of 2023, Gibson drove the then-13-year-old victim from Missouri to a campground in Arkansas, where he engaged in an illegal sex act with her. He also did so at his home in Crawford County.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gibson pleaded guilty in January in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one count of travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and one count of coercion and enticement of a minor.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Crawford County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the Diamond City (Arkansas) Police Department and the FBI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson prosecuted the case.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">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\u2019 Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division&#8217;s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, 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\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.justice.gov\/psc\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=http:\/\/www.justice.gov\/psc&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1776366726124000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1w4MR2roLIRA0IBhit22iR\">www.justice.gov\/psc<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>U.S. District Judge Henry E. Autrey on Wednesday sentenced a man to 170 months in prison for grooming and engaging in illegal sexual contact with a minor. Nathaniel Rod Gibson, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Crawford County Man Sentenced to 170 Months in Prison for Grooming, Sex w\/Minor - Effingham&#039;s News and Sports Leader, 979XFM and KJ Country 102.3<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Effingham&#039;s News and Sports Leader\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/local-news\/35467-crawford-county-man-sentenced-to-170-months-in-prison-for-grooming-sex-w-minor\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Crawford County Man Sentenced to 170 Months in Prison for Grooming, Sex w\/Minor - 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