A federal judge in Denver has sentenced a 56-year-old Portland, Ore., pastor and Boy Scout leader to 11 years in a federal prison for taking pornographic pictures of scouts at national parks in Colorado and across the West, authorities say.
U.S. District Chief Judge Marcia Krieger sentenced James Coleman Parkhurst, 57, to serve 15 years of supervised release after he completes his prison sentence.
Parkhurst pleaded guilty to one count of transportation of child pornography on Nov. 16, 2017.
Parkhurst was a former national youth camp official for the United Methodist Church.
He produced 163 pornographic images of five boys taken at national parks in Colorado and across the West. The images include pictures of nude and partially nude boys between the ages of 9 and 12, some while the boys took baths or as they urinated.
Before they identified Parkhurst as the creator of the pornography, law enforcement agencies around the world including national child protective agencies such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children identified the 163 photographs as the “spelunking series.” The photographs were widely circulated to child pornography collectors.
The Oregon-Idaho Conference Board of Camp and Retreat Ministries named Parkhurst as its executive director in 2015, according to a board news release. Parkhurst, a United Methodist deacon and a native of Kentucky, attended and worked at camps throughout his life, court records say.
Parkhurst also served as a camp director in Detroit, overseeing four sites. He oversaw the camping and youth ministries for the Desert Southwest Conference for over a decade and was the vice chairman of the church’s national camp committee.
Many of the nude pictures were taken between Aug. 16 and Aug. 20, 2010, at the Embassy Suites Denver, the court document says. Pictures also were taken at the Antero Hot Springs Cabins in Salida.
The court documents indicate that Parkhurst would regularly take boys on camping trips to national parks including Rocky Mountain National Park between 2007 and 2014, the records say. During the 2010 trip, he traveled with the boys to Manitou Springs, Pikes Peak and Estes Park. He admitted to investigators that he took the nude pictures of the boys.
He also took boys on trips to Germany, Canada, France, Peru, Brazil, Vietnam, Italy, Greece, Sweden and Hawaii, court records indicate.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the pornography case with assistance from investigative analysts in the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section’s High Technology Investigative Unit.
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.
