A former church youth ministry volunteer from Rolla, Missouri, has been sentenced to nine years in prison for possessing and distributing child sexual abuse material. U.S. District Judge John A. Ross delivered the sentence to Bradley Thomas Colvin on Wednesday. In addition to the prison term, Colvin was ordered to pay $84,000 to 28 victims identified in the materials he possessed.
Colvin engaged in searching for, viewing, and downloading child sexual abuse material over several years. He also distributed such material through a peer-to-peer file-sharing program to an officer with the Missouri State Highway Patrol during an investigation. Following a court-approved search of his home, Colvin admitted during a polygraph examination that he had touched a minor for sexual gratification at a pool party years earlier. Investigators discovered at least 833 videos and 5,566 images containing such material on Colvin’s electronic devices, which he acknowledged as part of his guilty plea.
The 52-year-old pleaded guilty in March in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one count of receipt and distribution of child pornography. Upon release from prison, Colvin will be under supervised release for life.
The case was investigated by the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Missouri State Technical Assistance Team, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson prosecuting.
This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, an initiative launched by the Department of Justice in May 2006 to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse nationwide. The project aims to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals exploiting children via the Internet while identifying and rescuing victims.
