Palmetto State News

Attorney General Alan Wilson announces repeat sex offender gets 20-year sentence

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

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

Judge McIntosh sentenced Swaney to 10 years on all four charges, with one count of third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor to run consecutively to the other charges. The other charges will run concurrently with each other. The defendant was also on probation when arrested and his probation was revoked in full to run concurrently with the sentences he received for sexual exploitation convictions.

Senior Assistant Deputy Attorney General Kyle Senn and Assistant Attorney General Stephen Ryan prosecuted the case for the state.