St. Charles, Missouri Man Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison for Child Pornography Crime

ST. LOUIS – A man who possessed child sexual abuse material and uploaded it to Snapchat was sentenced Thursday to 14 years in prison followed by 20 years of supervised release.

Joshua J. Klenke, 21, of St. Charles, pleaded guilty in June in U.S. District Court in St. Louis to one count of receiving child pornography. He admitted uploading child sexual abuse material (CSAM) to Snapchat. After an investigation sparked by CyberTips from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, investigators found videos and pictures containing CSAM on Klenke’s phone, as well as a picture of him kissing a 4-year-old girl on the lips. Klenke, who worked for a cleaning company, encountered the girl in a client’s home.

The St. Charles County Police Department and the FBI investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson prosecuted the case.

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.