A suspended Catholic priest was sentenced in federal court for
violating federal child sexual exploitation laws, United States Attorney
David J. Hickton announced today.
Bartley Sorensen, 63, was sentenced by United States District Judge
Alan N. Bloch to serve 97 months in prison, followed by five years of
supervised release, for receiving and possessing thousands of visual
depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Sorensen was
also ordered to pay a $25,000 fine.
On December 9, 2011, Sorensen was a Catholic priest assigned to Saint
John Fisher Parish in Churchill, Pennsylvania. On that day, a parish
employee observed Sorensen viewing an image on the screen of his
computer of a young boy wearing nothing but a shirt. The employee
promptly reported what she observed to the Catholic Child Abuse Hotline.
Search warrants were thereafter served at the rectory that resulted in
the seizure of, among other things, over 100 CDs, most of which were
loaded with thousands of images of children being sexually abused,
including one that depicted a nude male child with a rope around his
genitals and what appeared to be blood on his genitals.
Assistant United States Attorney Craig W. Haller prosecuted this case on behalf of the United States.
U.S. Attorney Hickton commended the Allegheny County District
Attorney’s Office, the Allegheny County Police Department, the Federal
Bureau of Investigation, and the Churchill Police Department for the
successful investigation leading to the conviction and sentence in this
case.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide
initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat
the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the
United States Attorneys’ Offices and the Criminal Division’s Child
Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals
federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute
individuals who sexually exploit children and to identify and rescue
victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit
www.usdoj.gov/psc.
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