Former Youth Minister Sentenced to Serve 60 Years in Federal Prison for Producing Child Pornography

WICHITA FALLS, Texas — Ryan Anthony Winner of Olney, Texas, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Reed C. O’Connor to 720 months (60 years) in federal prison, following his guilty plea in September 2015 to two counts of production of child pornography, announced U.S. Attorney John Parker of the Northern District of Texas.

Winner, 34, has been in custody since his arrest in July 2015 on a related federal complaint.

According to documents filed in the case, the investigation began when law enforcement learned that an individual, later identified as Winner, had created albums containing images of a minor male on a website that is used by persons interested in exchanging child pornography in order to meet and become child pornography trading partners.

On July 16, 2015, law enforcement executed a search warrant at two residences in Olney – one belonging to Winner and the other to his father.  Law enforcement seized Winner’s laptop and identified several files depicting a nude, prepubescent minor male victim, whom Winner admitted he had taken on a camping trip where he and the minor male victim had gone “skinny dipping.”  A forensic analysis of the laptop revealed the existence of another file, a still image of the same minor victim engaged in sexually explicit conduct with an adult male.  That image appears to have been taken at the church where Winner worked as a youth minister.  

Winner admitted that in late May 2015, he used a laptop computer to produce a video of a minor male whom he had enticed to engage in sexually explicit conduct.  He also admitted that in August 2014, he used a laptop computer and a digital camera to produce a visual depiction of the same minor male engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

The case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative, which was launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice, to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse.  Led by U.S. Attorney’s Offices and the 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 sexually exploit children, and identify and rescue victims.  For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/.  For more information about internet safety education, please visit http://www.justice.gov/psc/ and click on the tab “resources.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and the Texas Department of Public Safety investigated.  Assistant U.S. Attorney A. Saleem prosecuted.

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