Repeat sex offender gets 20 years in prison

Attorney General Alan Wilson Announces Repeat Offender Gets 20 Years in Prison

(COLUMBIA, SC) – Attorney General Alan Wilson announced that an Anderson County jury found Kenny Swaney guilty on two counts of second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and two counts of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor on August 7. Judge Lawton McIntosh sentenced Swaney to 20 years in prison.

In October 2022, Special Investigator Kevin Atkins of the Attorney General’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force obtained files containing child sexual abuse material on consecutive days. After obtaining subscription information, he determined that the files had been sent from Kenny Swaney’s residence in Anderson County. In December 2022, a search warrant was executed at Swaney’s residence, where Swaney admitted responsibility for the files containing child sexual abuse material. Swaney had previously been prosecuted by this office for similar conduct in 2014 and had been a registered sex offender since that conviction. Additionally, he had been convicted of a hands-on violation of a child.

Judge McIntosh sentenced Swaney to 10 years for all four counts, with one count of sexual exploitation of a minor in the third degree to run directly alongside the other charges. The other charges will run concurrently with each other. The defendant was also on probation at the time of his arrest, and his probation was revoked in its entirety to run concurrently with the sentences he received for his sexual exploitation convictions.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Kyle Senn and Assistant Attorney General Stephen Ryan prosecuted the case on behalf of the state.