Marciene Sullivan, 53, a Boulder, Colorado man, pleaded guilty to numerous child pornography and sexual assault charges, on Thursday. Sullivan was charged with four counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of sexual assault on a child for abuse and uploading of pornographic images to an Internet social network of a 7- or 8-year-old girl that was known to him over 18-months in 2007.
Sullivan will serve 40 years in prison for his abuse. In a statement to The Daily Camera, Prosecutor Bruce Langer spoke about the lengthy, albeit appropriate, sentence:
This was an ongoing series of sexual assaults against very a young girl, and Sullivan was someone who, because of their relationship, the victim thought was someone who would love and protect her. Instead, he stole her innocence, and he not only stole her innocence, but he shared that with strangers on the Internet.
According to The Denver Post, Sullivan was first arrested in Boulder on September 1, 2010 on suspicion of 22 counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of child abuse.
The charges that Sullivan wound up pleading guilty to this week were part of a plea deal that would spare the young 7 or 8 year old girl from testifying in trial, The Daily Camera reports.
Back in 2010, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which was already investigating Sullivan, told Boulder investigators that Sullivan had uploaded child pornography to a website. Investigators searched his home, seized his computers and found forensic evidence that he had uploaded images, 7News reported.
The original arrest of Sullivan was a successful joint operation between many federal, state and local agencies including the FBI, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Colorado Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and the Denver Police Department.