A 34-year-old Antelope Valley man was sentenced Tuesday to nearly 21 years in a federal prison after pleading guilty to recording himself molesting a 3-month-old relative, authorities said.
An investigation into Robert Dale Schrader of Littlerock began earlier this year when he emailed sexually explicit images of a baby to an undercover law enforcement officer based in England, a U.S. Attorney’s Office news release stated.
Data from those images led authorities to Schrader’s residence, which was raided on January 29.
During the raid, authorities rescued the baby. They also discovered some 200 child pornography images and videos depicting the infant.
Schrader “repeatedly sexually abused his three-month-old [relative],” federal prosecutors wrote in court documents, according to the news release. “He found online communities of like-minded individuals and bragged to them about his exploits with children, sharing his photographic trophies with them in hopes of obtaining similar child pornography in exchange.”
Authorities also uncovered evidence during the investigation that Schrader possibly had at least two more victims, a 12-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy, the release stated, adding that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office has filed additional charges against him.
At Tuesday’s sentencing, Schrader told U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess that there was a connection between his viewing child pornography online and molesting kids.
“Schrader described how viewing child pornography created for him a link between children and sexual desire, ultimately leading him to molest children and produce child pornography,” the release stated.
In addition to his sentence, Schrader will be on supervised release for the rest of his life once he gets out of prison.
