If you get investigated at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) for child pornography or another child sex offense, the investigation will have been ongoing for some time before you learn you’re in trouble. Many Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) cases court-martialed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord begin with investigations led by Pierce County and King County, including sting operations, and get handed to the Army. Other investigations start with a call from the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA) about your security clearance. How a Soldier responds after learning of an investigation can influence the entire case. Soldiers can use several critical, zero-cost protective measures immediately without hiring a lawyer. Recent JBLM trial results show how common child sex offense cases are at the base. Trial Defense Services (TDS) won’t proactively defend the case during the investigation, so whatever gets done during that time has to come from civilian counsel, and not every civilian counsel can defend a Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) case.
What should I do right now if I’m under investigation for a child sex offense at JBLM?
Don’t make things worse. The good news is that none of the action steps below costs money. You can implement them without hiring a lawyer.
- Say nothing about the facts to anyone other than your lawyer
- Don’t consent to any search
- Lock your devices with a PIN or passphrase
- Don’t back up your apps or files to the cloud
- Get off Meta products, use Signal
- Stop playing with fire: no porn or intimate images of any kind
- Make sure a family member or friend has a good lawyer’s number
- Assume that anyone who contacts you about old sexual interactions is working with law enforcement
- Don’t respond to DCSA without talking to a lawyer first
How does an ICAC case start at JBLM?
In most Joint Base Lewis-McChord cases involving CSAM or Article 120b, the first part of the investigation is led by an ICAC task force run by Pierce County and King County, often with assistance from the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division. CID then inherits the case and the Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC) decides whether to “go forward” and prosecute.
If your case started as an online conversation rather than from a tip about a file, read our page on ICAC stings. It explains those operations in detail, what the investigators can and can’t do under their own rules, and how a chat can lead to charges for attempted production of CSAM under Article 134, attempted sexual abuse of a child under Article 120b, and indecent exposure under Article 120c.
How common are CSAM and Article 120b cases at JBLM?
Child pornography and child sex offense cases often fill the JBLM docket. At least eight (none involving Gagne, Scherer & Associates) went to court-martial between September 2025 and June 2026, and every one ended in a guilty plea. That plea rate isn’t necessarily a measure of how strong the cases were. A high percentage of plea agreements can reflect how few defense counsel have expertise in dealing with the evidence in child sex offense cases.
Why is DCSA calling me about my clearance?
Likely because someone sent the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency derogatory information about you, and sometimes DCSA gets information before CID does. Since midsummer 2026, we’ve had a number of clients contacted for “continuous vetting interviews,” including several where the derogatory information involved CSAM allegations and there was no CID, state, or federal investigation pending yet. Two of those clients were under investigation at JBLM when they heard from DCSA. DCSA investigators aren’t law enforcement, have no law enforcement training, and don’t have to advise you of your rights. Whatever you tell DCSA goes into their report and up their supervisory chain, and they refer potentially incriminating information to CID or to federal or state authorities. We’ve picked up clients after they talked themselves into a criminal investigation.
How long will my JBLM case take?
It can be many months before a charging decision is made, and it could be more than a year. If the case goes to trial, expect more than a year from the start of the investigation to the close of the court-martial. For CSAM and any case when electronic devices were seized, JBLM has four CID digital forensic examiners (DFE) on staff and the cases still take a long time. They need that many DFEs to handle the volume, not to expedite the cases. Fort Bragg and Fort Carson have examiners on site as well, with the same result.
What can a lawyer do during a JBLM investigation?
Get involved in the case. At JBLM, OSTC prosecutors will take phone calls during an active investigation, giving a proactive defense attorney a direct line to the decision-maker. During the investigation, the prosecutor knows only what CID has told him, and agents aren’t known for trying to exonerate the accused. Defense counsel who contact CID and OSTC before the charging decision can make sure favorable information reaches the person making it. Holding back the defense’s best ammunition until trial is a foolish way to defend a case in the OSTC era, but most attorneys still do it that way.
Here’s what can happen when an attorney is proactive instead. We had an officer at JBLM accused of Article 120c and Article 134 child pornography production in a case investigated by both Pierce County and the Army. He hired us before his CID interview. We told CID there would be no statement and no polygraph, gave the assigned OSTC prosecutor information the investigators weren’t going to pass along, and blocked Family Advocacy from getting a statement. OSTC deferred the case. The command dropped it. Pierce County never charged him.
Does every child-related case at JBLM plead out?
While guilty pleas are the trend at JBLM, a conviction isn’t inevitable. By their nature, Article 120b and CSAM allegations often appear firmly corroborated, the kinds of cases OSTC takes to trial. Because OSTC is judged on its conviction percentage, prosecutors are eager to lock in guaranteed guilty pleas rather than risk taking complex cases to trial, even if it means offering generous terms. When paired with defense counsel who lack the technical knowledge to fight CSAM evidence or child sex allegations, both sides default to a quick plea deal. Before even considering a deal, defense counsel has to assess whether the government can even get its evidence admitted. We’ve tried two Army CSAM cases where the evidence looked overwhelming. In both, the prosecutors assumed the defense would cave and take a bad deal, but the cases went to trial, where the defense exploited the prosecution’s ignorance of the rules of evidence. In both cases, all evidence was kept out of the court-martial with timely objections. One client was acquitted. In the other case, the government withdrew the charges. These outcomes are described in more detail on our CSAM case results page.
What kind of lawyer do I need for a CSAM case at JBLM?
A specialist. You need a military defense lawyer who handles not only covered offenses, but CSAM and ICAC allegations in particular. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of those in the military or civilian side. Not every criminal defense lawyer is equipped for a child pornography case, or any case alleging a sex crime committed against a child, and not every self-advertised “former JAG” has that expertise. As you call around, ask the attorney to walk you through how the government builds a case like this: from the initial tip to law enforcement, to the search authorization, why these investigations take so long and what a “forensic examination” consists of, how the prosecution proves an image depicts a minor, and what scenario qualifies a text exchange as a charge for attempted Article 120b rape and sexual assault of a child. You can’t get those answers from law firm websites written by AI, which most of them are now. Also ask which attorney is going to do the work and who will appear in person at the Article 32 and at trial. Some out-of-state firms will collect the Soldier’s fee and then hand the work to a local attorney who’s desperate for money, and all too often that attorney will have no court-martial experience, let alone the expertise a CSAM or other covered offense case requires.
Gagne, Scherer & Associates: Joint Base Lewis-McChord Lawyers
If you’re under investigation for a child pornography, child sex offense, or any other serious case at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, contact Gagne, Scherer & Associates. You’ll consult with an attorney, free, and we’ll tell you what to do about CID.