Orange County church volunteer sentenced to 120 years in prison for molesting girls as young as 6
A former Anaheim church ministry volunteer was sentenced to more than 120 years in prison for molesting girls as young as 6 years old, according to authorities.
Newport Beach resident Todd Christian Hartman, 41, was convicted earlier last month on two felony counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration of a child 10 years or younger, four felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14 and one felony count of possession of child sexual abuse material, according to an Orange County district attorney’s office news release.
“Houses of worship should be safe havens from the evils of the world, but instead child predators transform them from a place of safety into a hunting ground for unsuspecting victims for their twisted sexual gratification,” Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said in the release.
On Wednesday, Hartman was sentenced to 120 years to life plus another four years and four months in prison, according to the district attorney’s office. Under the state’s elder parole law, though, he will become eligible for parole after he serves 20 years of his sentence, Spitzer said.
“When he does come up for parole,” Spitzer said in the release, “we will do everything in our power as prosecutors to keep him behind bars where he undoubtedly belongs.”
A former L.A. County sheriff’s deputy is sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading no contest to repeatedly sexually abusing four girls ages 4 to 13.
In 2016, officials said, Hartman contacted the father of two of his alleged victims and admitted that he molested one of them, whom he had met while he was volunteering in the Anaheim Vineyard Church children’s ministry and she was 6 years old. Church leaders changed his responsibilities because they were concerned about him repeatedly putting children in his lap, the district attorney’s office said.
Hartman was also convicted of molesting the girl’s younger sister while taking sexually suggestive photos of her on his lap, officials said, and of molesting a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old girl during a 2009 sleepover at the family home of one of the girls.
The Newport Beach Police Department served a search warrant in February 2015 on Hartman’s Newport Beach home after connecting it to an IP address that had shared child sexual abuse images, the district attorney’s office said.
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