A former Anaheim church volunteer was sentenced to more than 120 years in prison for abusing girls as young as six years old, according to authorities.
Newport Beach resident Todd Christian Hartman, 41, was convicted earlier this month of two felony counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration of a child 10 years of age or younger, four felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor under the age of 14 and a felony count of possession of child pornography, according to a press release from the Orange County District Attorney.
“Houses of worship should be safe havens from the evils of the world, but instead child predators turn them from a place of safety into a hunting ground for unsuspecting victims of their twisted sexual gratification,” Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer said in the release.
On Wednesday, Hartman was sentenced to 120 years to life plus an additional four years and four months in prison, according to the prosecutor’s office. Under the state’s older conditional lawHowever, he will be eligible for parole after he serves 20 years of his sentence, Spitzer said.
“When he comes 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.”
In 2016, officials said, Hartman contacted the father of two of his alleged victims and admitted to molesting one of them, whom he had met while volunteering at Anaheim Vineyard Church’s children’s ministry and she was 6 years old. Church leaders changed his responsibilities because they were concerned he would repeatedly place children in his lap, the district attorney’s office said.
Hartman was also convicted of assaulting the girl’s younger sister while taking sexually suggestive pictures of her on his lap, officials said, and assaulting a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old girl during a 2009 sleepover at the family’s home. one of the girls.
The Newport Beach Police Department served a search warrant in February 2015 at Hartman’s Newport Beach home after linking it to an IP address that had shared child pornography, the district attorney’s office said.