Thursday, September 19, 2024
A Granbury man was sentenced Thursday to 50 years in federal prison for filming himself molesting a 9-year-old girl, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Leigha Simonton.
Stephen Wayne Ashley Jr., 35, was charged in March and pleaded guilty in May to sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. He was sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman to 600 months in prison — 360 months for the sexual exploitation charge and 240 months for the child pornography charge; the two sentences will run consecutively. Pittman also ordered the defendant to pay $13,500 in restitution to several victims and to register as a sex offender.
“This defendant chose to repeatedly sexually exploit a child and then made a conscious decision to film himself conducting these egregious offenses,” said Homeland Security Investigations’ Dallas Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jesse Woods. “HSI is grateful for the collaboration of all our law enforcement partners, for their role in this investigation, ensuring that this individual will never harm an innocent child again.”
According to court documents, the investigation began when the New South Wales Police in Australia began looking into an individual who shared links containing child pornography on Twitter (now known as X). One of the links, which contained more than 1,600 files of mostly child pornography, was traced to Ashley.
On March 11, agents executed a search warrant at Ashley’s residence, where they found Ashley’s phone. On the phone, they found a hidden folder containing videos of Ashley sexually molesting a 9-year-old girl.
After being Mirandized, Ashley admitted to officers that he began filming the child when she was 7 and continued to do so for a period of years.
HSI’s Dallas Field Office conducted the investigation with the assistance of the New South Wales Police and the Hood County District Attorney’s Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Aisha Saleem prosecuted the case.
