The former Director of Maintenance of the Petersburg School District was sentenced to federal prison on Tuesday for Child Exploitation, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy M. Burgess sentenced former Petersburg School District employee Tye Leif Peterson to 12 years in federal prison as well as a 25-year term of supervised release upon completion of his prison term.

The sentencing was the result of an investigation that found that Peterson distributed, received and possessed sexually explicit images and videos of children, many of whom were prepubescent engaged in  sexually explicit conduct.

The FBI, following a lead from a related federal investigation taking place in the Eastern District of Tennessee, were led to an e-mail account belonging to Petersen. Armed with that evidence, the FBI applied for and received a search warrant for Petersen’s home and property. When FBI agents carried out their search, they recovered 11 CD-ROMs, five thumb drives, three detached hard drives, and one Apple desktop computer which all contained images of child pornography. Additional 37 videos of child pornography were also discovered on that computer. During the investigation Petersen would also identify an additional e-mail account, that account also showed activity of distribution of child pornography.

Court records showed that Peterson “distributed, received and possessed over 2,000 images and 39 videos that included children under the age of twelve and material depicting sadistic or masochistic conduct,” according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack S. Schmidt.

Schmidt also stated that:

“Petersen, in his position as Director of Maintenance, surreptitiously took pictures of children at the local high school and in the community of Petersburg. Petersen also obtained additional images from electronic media in the school’s lost and found, and on school-issued computers where Petersen recovered images using a software recovery program to obtain deleted images from the computers. Petersen then used those images to trade for child pornography on a Russian website that is solely used for the distribution and receipt of child pornography.”

At sentencing, Judge Burgess pointed out the seriousness of Peterson’s offense and said Peterson’s actions were a “betrayal of trust” and called those actions “a level of betrayal and breach of trust that goes beyond what happens in most cases.” Judge Burgess further stated that the images the defendant took and used to trade for child pornography are “out there on the internet, forever.”

The judge justified the sentence given, referencing the “need to protect the public from the defendant, and the need to provide treatment for the defendant as reasons for the sentence imposed.”

The charges, conviction and sentencing were a result of an investigation undertaken by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Petersburg Police Department.

  child pornography, exploitation, judge burgess, sentencing, tye peterson