Convicted sex offender charged with child trafficking

Oneida County district attorney Jillian Pfeifer has filed a new criminal complaint against convicted sex offender Albert Chagnon.

On Tuesday, the district attorney’s office charged the 42-year-old with nine new counts of possession of child pornography and a single count of child trafficking. All of the counts also include a modifier indicating the state intends to ask for Chagnon to be placed on lifetime sex offender supervision if convicted.

According to the criminal complaint, the trafficking charge is related to chat conversations Chagnon allegedly had with someone in Europe regarding arranging a commercial sex transaction involving a very young girl.

In explaining her request for a $100,000 cash bail on the new charges, Pfeifer shared explicit information from the criminal complaint regarding Chagnon’s alleged efforts to arrange a meeting the child. 

According to the complaint, Chagnon told the person with whom he was conversing that he has never been married because his “love of little girls” is not accepted. He also discusses his attraction to children between the ages of 18 months and 12 years old and his preference for those between the ages of 3 and 8 years old.

“Given the conversations contained on that cellular device, there is a legitimate concern that given the opportunity, he would engage in this kind of misconduct with a child,” Pfeifer argued.

In addition to the chats, Pfeifer said approximately 93,000 images of suspected child pornography were also found on the phone. 

According to the complaint, the state learned about the phone in question when Chagnon called a roommate and asked him to get rid of it.

“Just take it and get it out the room,” he told the roommate, according to the complaint. “You know what I mean.”

Investigators located the device while executing a search warrant for Chagnon’s bedroom.

Chagnon now has a total of four pending cases. In addition to  possession of child pornography and the child trafficking count, he is also charged with failure to update sex offender information, encouraging a probation violation (involving an allegation he helped another convicted sex offender obtain a phone) and felony bail jumping.

Public defender Elizabeth Svehlek argued against Pfeifer’s bail recommendation, stressing that Chagnon is indigent and thus cannot post $1,000 let alone $100,000. 

Ultimately, Judge Mike Schiek agreed that a high cash bail was necessary to protect the public.

A preliminary hearing in the new case was scheduled for 10:45 a.m. Oct. 17.

The state’s decision to seek lifetime sex offender supervision for Chagnon is noteworthy as his current term of sex offender registration is set to elapse in January.

According to court records, Chagnon’s first conviction of possession of child pornography took place over 20 years ago. 

He has been back in Rhinelander since the fall of 2022 after completing a sentence for violating prison rules during his incarceration on previous possession of child pornography charges.

In August 2022, after the Rhinelander Police Department issued an alert to the public in advance of Chagnon’s return to the community, the River News noted that the Department of Corrections offender locator website indicated that Chagnon would remain under Department of Corrections supervision for just over a year (until Sept. 21, 2023) and will no longer have to register as a sex offender as of Jan. 8, 2025.

According to the police department’s press release, in addition to a possession of child pornography conviction in 2003, Chagnon also has convictions for failure to maintain sex offender registry in 2010, failure to update sex offender information in 2013, violating state/county institution laws in 2014 and battery in 2018.

The 2014 case involved Chagnon clipping hundreds of photos of young girls and keeping them in a notebook while he was an inmate at the Oshkosh Correctional Institution.

According to court records, as Chagnon was being processed for discharge from prison, officials found a notebook containing photographs of fully clothed girls that he had clipped from The Lakeland Times and other publications.

Some of the photos were accompanied by written commentary of a graphic nature.

Following discovery of the notebook, Chagnon was charged with 23 felony counts of intentionally photographing a minor without consent and four counts of violating state/county institution laws. However, an appeals court later ordered the dismissal of the felony counts, agreeing with Chagnon’s defense attorney that those counts fell under the statute that prohibits sex offenders from “intentionally capturing a representation” of a minor without the written consent of the child’s parent, legal guardian or custodian.

Chagnon’s attorney argued that “intentionally capturing a representation” means Chagnon would have had to have produced the photos himself using a camera or recording device. 

In its written decision, the appeals court said the Legislative Reference Bureau’s analysis of 2005 Assembly Bill 251, which was the source of the statute under which Chagnon was charged, states: “This bill prohibits persons who are required to register as sex offenders from intentionally photographing, filming, or videotaping any person under the age of 17 unless the parent, custodian, or guardian of the person under the age of 17 provides written consent.”

In addition, Chagnon did not store the “data” of the visual representations because that would have entailed digital storage, the court noted.

Following the appeals court ruling, Chagnon entered no contest pleas to three misdemeanor counts of violating state/county institution laws (as a repeater). 

A Winnebago County judge sentenced him to one year in prison followed by one year of extended supervision, to be served consecutively, with credit for 394 days served. 

He completed that sentence in the fall of 2022 prior to his return to Rhinelander.

Heather Schaefer may be reached at [email protected].