Former Athens mayor sentenced to federal prison

ATHENS — The former mayor of Athens has been sentenced to federal prison for child obscenity violations. According to our news partner KETK, James Monte Montgomery, 65, pleaded guilty to sending obscene materials to a minor on August 25, 2022, and was sentenced to 60 months in federal prison Wednesday. According to public information, on June 3, 2021, Montgomery was arrested after arriving at an undisclosed location after soliciting sex online with investigators posing as minors. In June of 2020, Montgomery, then the mayor of Athens, began communicating by text messaging with a person he believed to be a 15-year-old female. Montgomery sent messages to the child describing sexually explicit acts that he wanted to perform on the child and offering to pay the child if she would meet him and have sex with him. This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.