A Butler County, Missouri man has pleaded guilty in federal court to possessing child sexual abuse material while staying at a halfway house. Leslie Bryan Clark, 59, entered his plea on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau.
Clark admitted that on June 13, 2025—the day he was scheduled for release from the halfway house—he was found with video clips of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct on his phone. The discovery followed a Cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which indicated Clark had uploaded child sexual abuse material using the Kik app. When approached by a probation officer, Clark surrendered his phone containing the illicit material.
This is not Clark’s first conviction for similar offenses. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography in the same federal court and received a sentence of 10 years in prison followed by 15 years of supervised release.
Clark is set to be sentenced on April 20. Due to his prior conviction, he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years and up to 20 years in prison. He also admitted to violating conditions of his supervised release from the earlier case and will be sentenced for that violation as well.
The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Probation Office of the Eastern District of Missouri and the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Koester is handling the prosecution.
"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 U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc."
