Marseilles man gets 14 years in prison in sexual abuse case

A Marseilles man was sentenced Friday to 14 years in prison for the sexual abuse of a child and for taking sexually explicit images of two victims.

Nathaniel R. Haff-Fluech, 22, appeared in La Salle County Circuit Court for an agreed-upon sentence. Last month, he entered a blind plea to two counts of possessing child sexual abuse images, a Class X felony carrying six to 30 years in prison, and one count of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, a Class 2 felony carrying three to seven years.

On Friday, attorneys in the case disclosed the agreed-upon terms of the sentence. Haff-Fluech will serve back-to-back sentences of seven years for each count of possession of child sexual abuse images.

Haff-Fluech is eligible for day-for-day good time and has about seven months of credit for time served, most of it under home confinement. He could be released in early 2031.

Upon release, he will begin serving four years of reporting probation for the sexual abuse conviction.

Haff-Fluech, who was immediately taken into custody to await transfer to the Illinois Department of Corrections, declined an opportunity to address Chief Judge H. Chris Ryan Jr. before the sentence was finalized.

At one point in the case, Haff-Fluech could have faced up to 90 years after investigators executed a Feb. 14 search warrant of his residence and seized electronic devices and images.

A prosecutor at that time said some of the digital images and videos were “homemade” child sexual abuse images and said Haff-Fluech admitted to producing them while at least one underage victim slept.

Most of his seven counts were not recent. Court records show that most charges, including those for sexual contact, were alleged to have occurred in 2019 and 2020.