SANTA ANA, Calif.—A former youth minister for an Anaheim church was convicted July 10 of molesting four girls and possessing child pornography.
Todd Christian Hartman was convicted of eight felony counts related to sexual assaults on four girls as well as one felony count of possession of child pornography. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 31.
The case against Mr. Hartman started with Newport Beach police in October 2014 when investigators were tipped about child pornography on the defendant’s devices at his home, according to court records. Mr. Hartman lived with his mother there at the time.
A computer in his room had more than 1,500 suspected child pornography and child erotica images and about 400 suspected child pornographic videos, according to prosecutors. Another hard drive had about 5,000 suspected child pornography images and a thumb drive contained about 80 deleted video files with names associated with child porn, prosecutors said.
Mr. Hartman was indicted by federal prosecutors, who later dismissed the case against him when a detective failed to read the defendant his Miranda rights, prosecutors said.
Mr. Hartman was previously accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl and her 12-year-old friend Dec. 29 and Dec. 30, 2009, when they were at one of the alleged victims’ great-grandmother’s home in Fullerton, but the Orange County District Attorney’s Office declined to file a case at that time. The charges in Mr. Hartman’s current trial included those same accusers.
When the federal case against Mr. Hartman was dropped and he was released from custody in January 2016, he told the father of two sisters he met through a youth ministry at Vineyard Church in Anaheim that the federal charges were dismissed and he planned to visit them, prompting one of the girls to have a “meltdown,” and tell her mother she was molested, Deputy District Attorney Scott Wooldridge said.
“He was the guy who was part of the family,” Mr. Wooldridge said in his closing argument. “They invited him into their home routinely.”
The father noticed a “change in behavior” when his daughter was 9, which was when she was molested, Mr. Wooldridge said.
Mr. Hartman also admitted molesting the girl on a phone call to her mother while a police investigator eavesdropped, Mr. Wooldridge said.
Mr. Hartman was a friend of the family of one of the victims in the Fullerton case, the prosecutor said. Mr. Hartman, who had been drinking, molested one of the girls despite her protests several times, Mr. Wooldridge said. She said it happened again the next evening, according to the prosecutor.
The girl’s friend accused Mr. Hartman of also molesting her despite her protests to stop, Mr. Wooldridge said.
Mr. Hartman’s attorney, Marji Kirkwood of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, implored jurors to consider each allegation separately and to avoid lumping them all together.
The defense attorney said jurors could consider a lesser charge of sexual battery for one of the victims, but said a more serious charge was not proved.
The defense attorney argued that the victim’s sister, who is seen in multiple photos sitting on the defendant’s lap, denied being molested in 2016 and again when interviewed by investigators in 2017.
Ms. Kirkwood also argued there was no evidence proving her client knew there was child pornography on his computers.
