Columbia County Man Sentenced to 12 Years for Child Pornography
A Columbia County man who’s a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army has been sentenced to more than 12 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to Distribution of Child Pornography.
Joshua Barnhill
U.S. District Judge Dudley H. Bowen sentenced 41-year-old Joshua Paul Barnhill of Martinez to 151 months in federal prison, where there is no parole. He was also ordered to register as a sex offender, pay restitution of $21,000, and serve 15 years of supervised release upon completion of his prison term.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children sent a CyberTip to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation about sexually explicit images and videos of children that had been shared by the KIK internet messaging app. Investigators discovered the images were coming from Barnhill’s location and found hundreds of images and videos on devices he had used to upload the images to the KIK and Wickr applications.
“Joshua Barnhill shared sexually explicit images of young children to online messaging applications for exploitations by other viewers,” said U.S. Attorney Jill E. Steinberg.
Barnhill is a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, serving as a recruiter operating from Fort Jackson, South Carolina. He was arrested on four counts of Sexual Exploitation of Children and taken into custody in Columbia County in October, 2022.
Anyone with information on suspected child sexual exploitation can contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-843-5678, or online HERE.
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