Oregon Pastor James Parkhurst Gets 11+ Years for Child Porn

James Parkhurst, a 57-year-old former pastor from Portland, Oregon, was sentenced to 135 months in federal prison for transporting child pornography across state lines — a grim fall from grace for a man once entrusted with spiritual leadership.

The sentence, handed down today by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Marcia S. Krieger in Colorado, includes 15 years of supervised release following Parkhurst’s prison term. The conviction stems from a years-long pattern of predatory behavior that spanned multiple states and exploited minors he had access to under the guise of pastoral care.

Court documents reveal that in August 2010, Parkhurst traveled to Colorado where he produced explicit images of nude minors under his supervision, then transported those files to his home in Michigan. His guilty plea on November 16, 2017, acknowledged three separate trips during which he photographed naked children — including posing them in sexually suggestive positions — all under the cover of religious authority.

A forensic sweep of electronic devices seized from Parkhurst’s Oregon residence in 2016 uncovered a digital archive of horror: hundreds of thousands of illicit images and more than 3,500 videos depicting minors in various stages of undress. The material was found stored on his personal computer and external hard drives, meticulously saved and cataloged.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service led the investigation, with crucial analytical support from the Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS). Prosecution was handled by CEOS Trial Attorney Lauren S. Kupersmith and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alecia L. Riewerts of the District of Colorado, with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon.

This case was prosecuted under Project Safe Childhood, a DOJ initiative launched in 2006 to combat the spread of child sexual abuse material online. Federal authorities say the program continues to dismantle networks of predators by combining federal muscle with local intelligence — and in Parkhurst’s case, delivering long-overdue justice for his victims.