A 36-year-old Littlerock man convicted of videotaping himself sexually abusing a 3-month-old family member has been sentenced to 35 years to life in state prison, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
Robert Dale Schrader is currently serving a more than 21-year sentence in a federal prison for a child pornography conviction, according to a DA’s news release. He will begin serving a life sentence after the federal one is finished.
Schrader entered a no contest plea on March 3 to one count of sodomy of a child 10 years and under, and two counts of lewd acts upon a child under age the age of 14, prosecutors said.
The defendant sexually abused the infant victim on Jan. 11, 2014, according to Deputy DA Scott Yang, who prosecuted the case. Schrader photographed and videotaped the abuse, then published the images online.
Less than three weeks later, British authorities discovered that “an individual using a Yahoo email account had sent multiple sexually explicit images of an infant to an undercover officer in England,” according to criminal complaint previously obtained by KTLA.
Authorities tracked down Schrader through data embedded in the images. He was arrested and the baby was rescued, the complaint stated.
During the raid of the defendant’s Antelope Valley home, authorities also discovered approximately 200 images and videos depicting the infant victim, officials said.
“This is one of the youngest, if not the youngest, child pornography victims ever identified in the Los Angeles area,” Claude Arnold, a special agent who was in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in Los Angeles at the time said in a statement after Schrader’s arrest.
After the arrest, federal prosecutors said in court documents that Schrader “repeatedly sexually abused” the 3-month-old boy, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office statement released after he pleaded guilty in September 2014.
“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,” the court documents read.
A booking photo of the defendant was not released.
At his first sentencing in 2014, Schrader told a federal judge there was a link between his viewing child pornography online and molesting children.
“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 U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
The case was investigated by multiple agencies, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.