Shawn Riedesel, Child Exploitation, Indiana 2022

NEW ALBANY—In a shocking case of child exploitation, Shawn Riedesel, a 29-year-old teaching assistant from Burnsville, Minnesota, has been sentenced to 440 months in federal prison, followed by 25 years of supervised release, for grooming and sexually exploiting children.

Riedesel must also pay $69,000 in restitution to his victims, and upon his release from federal prison, he must register as a sex offender wherever he lives, works, or goes to school, as required by law.

According to court documents, between December 2021 and July 2022, Shawn Riedesel enticed and coerced at least three underage girls to produce and send sexually explicit images and videos. He also met at least one child in person for sex on multiple occasions.

While he was committing these crimes, Riedesel began a teacher preparation program through Teach Kentucky and stayed in a dorm room on Bellarmine University’s campus, while also living at another residence in Louisville. Riedesel was not enrolled as a student at Bellarmine University.

In late June of 2022, a witness learned of inappropriate electronic communications between Riedesel and a 15-year-old Indiana girl over a school computer. The child told Riedesel she was fifteen, and she initially believed he was a 19-year-old boy. In fact, he was a 29-year-old man who used an end-to-end encrypted email program to communicate.

The witness used the child’s email account to continue the conversation. Riedesel indicated that he and the child had previously had sex in person, and that he would help the victim run away from home so that they could meet and engage in specific sex acts. He was concerned the victim’s parents might know what he looked like, and that he would be in trouble for having sex with a child.

On July 2, 2022, Riedesel was arrested when he arrived to meet the child at her parents’ house. Investigators seized his iPhone and conducted court-authorized searches of the device as well as his dorm room and residence. Investigators found printed sexually explicit images of the Indiana child affixed to a wall in his dorm room, arranged in the shape of a heart.

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