St. Louis County Man Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison, Ordered to Pay $66,000 to Child Pornography Victims

ST. LOUIS – U.S. District Judge Ronnie L. White on Tuesday sentenced a man from St. Louis County, Missouri who possessed more than 63,000 images and videos containing child pornography to 10 years in federal prison.

Judge White also ordered Christopher D. Cotton, 33, to pay $66,000 in restitution to known victims who appeared in Cotton’s collection.

In letters to the court, victims wrote about the pain that defendants like Cotton continue to cause them and the fear that they will be recognized by someone who has seen the pictures. 

One who uses the pseudonym Andy wrote, “My sexual abuse occurred from the ages of 6-12. During this time my victimization was documented and shared across the country, and is continuously being shared.”

“I feel that every single criminal that is found with mine or another child’s images should be held accountable for the highest amount possible to help us victims repair our lives,” Andy wrote.

The parents of another wrote, “Aside from the horrible truth that my daughter was horrifically abused from the ages of four to seven and her innocence was literally stolen, one of the ongoing concerns that plagues my child is that literally any person she meets on the street (or any teenage boy in her class) might have seen photos of her being cruelly debased and abused.”

The victims are notified when their photos are found in the possession of a defendant. One victim said 22,000 notifications had been received in her case. Another wrote, “Each victim notification envelope represents someone who sexually enjoys seeing me hurt…. When a market exists for child pornography, it will continue. I am constantly victimized, knowing the awful truth that I can never escape these photos.”

“I am so angry that the images are out there and can’t be taken down. I feel like the images will always be out there. I think I am too broken to be fixed,” another wrote.

Cotton pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis in April to one count of receiving child pornography and admitted uploading files containing child pornography to DropBox. That triggered a report to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and sparked an investigation.

On July 13, 2022, law enforcement officers executed a court-approved search warrant at Cotton’s home in St. Louis County near Florissant. Cotton admitted both viewing and collecting child pornography. He also told officers that he’d received child pornography from “maybe fifteen or more” minors with whom he had contact via social media, the youngest of which Cotton said was 13 years old.

Investigators would later find a total of at least 16,677 images and 46,414 videos of child pornography stored online and on Cotton’s electronic devices, including a laptop and three cell phones.

The case was investigated by the St. Louis County Special Investigations Unit, the St. Charles County Cybercrime Task Force and the FBI.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Jillian Anderson prosecuted the case.  

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc.