THE United States Department of Justice says a 72-year-old Wisconsin man has been sentenced to 60 months in jail for travelling to Belize and “engaging in and attempting to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor”.

Assistant Attorney General Lanny A Breuer of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said Roland J Flath of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, was sentenced in Milwaukee in the US District Court in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

In addition to his prison term, Flath was sentenced to 10 years of supervised release, Breuer said. Flath had pleaded guilty on May 19, 2012.

According to court documents, Flath travelled to Belize in July 2006, and subsequently “sexually molested a minor girl from that country”.

Flath was originally charged by a criminal complaint filed in the Eastern District of Wisconsin in October 2010.

The Justice Department said he was arrested by the Guatemalan National Civil Police on February 20, 2011, expelled to the United States and arrested in the United States by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the US Marshal Service.

Flath was indicted on March 22, 2011, by a grand jury sitting in the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice.

Led by US Attorneys' offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood “marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children, as well as to identify and rescue victims,” Breuer said.