An Army recruiter living in Martinez was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for uploading videos of children being sexually abused to the internet.
Joshua Paul Barnhill, 41, recently pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to distribution of child pornography after being arrested last year by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
District Judge Dudley H. Bowen sentenced Barnhill Sept. 20 to 151 months in prison, pay restitution of $21,000 and serve 15 years of supervised release after his prison sentence. There is no parole in the federal system.
“Joshua Barnhill shared sexually explicit images of young children to online messaging applications for exploitation by other viewers,” U.S. Attorney Jill Steinberg said in a statement. “Such exploitative conduct has earned him substantial prison time.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children notified the GBI of someone sharing sexually explicit images and videos of children on the Kik adult messaging app, according to the statement.
Agents traced the images to Barnhill’s location and found “hundreds of images and videos” on devices Barnhill used to upload to Kik as well as Wickr, another messaging app, it said.
“We are grateful for the partnerships we maintain with our local and federal agencies to bring these predators to justice,” GBI Director Chris Hosey said.
Barnhill is a staff sergeant in the Army who was serving as a recruiter at Fort Jackson near Columbia, S.C.
Anyone with information on suspected child sexual exploitation can contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 800-843-5678, or https://report.cybertip.org/
According to court records, Barnhill was an Ohio native who had served about 12 years in the Army at various posts. He was taking classes for a bachelor’s degree in psychology and has two daughters, including a two-year-old with his soon-to-be ex-wife with whom he lived in Martinez.
