Beltsville Man Sentenced To Decades In Federal Prison For Child Pornography
Saturday, December 28, 2024, 9:15 A.M. ET. 2 Minute Read, By Art Fletcher: Englebrook Independent News,
GREENBELT, MD.- On Friday, December 20, 2024, Brian Patrick Werth, 40, of Beltsville, Maryland, appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland and was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Theodore D. Chuang to 444 months in federal prison, to be followed by twenty-five years of supervised release for his conviction on two counts of Production of Child Pornograpy.
According to U.S. Attorney Erek L. Barron, Werth was convicted at trial of coercing and enticing a child to engage in sexually explicit conduct and engaging a child as a registered sex offender.
During Friday’s sentencing hearing, in addition to the term of imprisonment, Judge Chuang ordered Werth, upon release from prison, to register as a sex offender in the national database, to have no contact with children under the age of eighteen and be subject to computer monitoring.
Werth Convicted By Federal Jury
Following a three-day trial, a federal jury found that from January 2021 through June 2021, Werth communicated with minor girls, ages eleven and sixteen, through online applications, WhatsApp and Kik. During the communications, Werth persuaded, coerced, and enticed the young girls to engage in sexually explicit by producing sexually explicit videos of themselves and then requesting them to send the videos to him.
Additionally, Werth engaged in the sexual exploitation of the two children while being registered as a sex offender listed on the Maryland Sex Offender Register for a previous sex offense conviction.
Werth Previously Convicted Of Sexually Abusing Teen Girl
In 2016, Werth, a youth minister at St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church in Rockville, Maryland, was arrested and charged in connection with the sexual abuse of a then 16-year-old girl who was a parishioner at the church. In 2018, Werth, following his conviction, was sentenced by a Montgomery County Judge to 3 years in Maryland State Prison on the charges of second-degree Sexual Assault and a fourth-degree Sex Offense.
