diff --git a/Core/src/org/sleuthkit/autopsy/coreutils/FileUtil.java b/Core/src/org/sleuthkit/autopsy/coreutils/FileUtil.java
index 5b432124ba..6422fbcad2 100644
--- a/Core/src/org/sleuthkit/autopsy/coreutils/FileUtil.java
+++ b/Core/src/org/sleuthkit/autopsy/coreutils/FileUtil.java
@@ -20,6 +20,8 @@ package org.sleuthkit.autopsy.coreutils;
 
 import java.io.File;
 import java.io.IOException;
+import java.nio.charset.Charset;
+import java.nio.charset.StandardCharsets;
 import java.util.logging.Level;
 import org.openide.filesystems.FileObject;
 import java.nio.file.Files;
@@ -171,6 +173,18 @@ public class FileUtil {
         //with underscores. We are only keeping \ as it could be part of the path.
         return fileName.replaceAll("[\\p{Cntrl}/:\"*?<>|]+", "_");
     }
+    
+    /**
+     * UTF-8 sanitize and escape special characters in a file name or a file name component
+     *
+     * @param fileName to escape
+     *
+     * @return Sanitized string
+     */
+    public static String utf8SanitizeFileName(String fileName) {
+        Charset charset = StandardCharsets.UTF_8;
+        return charset.decode(charset.encode(escapeFileName(fileName))).toString();
+    }    
 
     /**
      * Test if the current user has read and write access to the dirPath.