Pastor who led Faith Baptist Church in Round Rock, Texas, for 18 years, David Lloyd Walther could face up to 20 years in prison after he was arrested for searching for, downloading, distributing, and possessing child pornography, the Department of Justice has announced.
Walther, 56, allegedly downloaded and made child pornography available to others using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing network, according to a criminal complaint filed in Austin federal court.
Further details from the affidavit cited by Law & Crime said Walther, who admitted to investigators that he has a “pornography addiction,” downloaded content at both his church and home.
Officials say he had a “BDSM” folder containing an image of a nude boy with a collar on his neck being sexually abused and a similar image of a female toddler.
He also had images of nude boys and girls being restrained by ropes and tools as well as a bestiality video with a dog and a female toddler “likely less than 3 years old.”
According to the affidavit, Walther told investigators that “when he viewed the child pornography, the children depicted were between 8 and 17 years old, either posing sexually or engaged in sex acts with adults or other children.”
He also confessed that he would often go through cycles of “downloading and viewing pornography depicting both adults and minors” and would purge the content when he felt guilty about what he was doing, Law & Crime added.
David Clawson, a deacon at Faith Baptist Church which has scrubbed all evidence of Walther as their leader from their website and suspended their public social media profiles, told the Austin American-Statesman that while Walther was pastor at Faith Baptist Church for 18 years, they were moving on.
“We regret anything along these lines that has happened,” Clawson told the publication on Friday about the charges against Walther. “The church will continue to move forward as God has led.”
Authorities said they were able to trace the downloads made by Walther to an IP address connected to the church as well as his home in Georgetown, Texas.
On or about September 18, 2022, at 0015 hours, a successful download of child pornography was obtained from IP address 69.212.115.82 via BitTorrent. On October 6, 2022, information from AT&T, in response to legal process, indicated that the subscriber of IP address 69.212.115.82, at 0015 hours on September 18, 2022, was Defendant WALTHER at his personal residence in Georgetown, Texas. IP Address 69.212.115.82 is a static IP address and has been assigned only to Defendant WALTHER’s residence since May 3, 2022, when Walther’s account was initialed at that location,” the affidavit said.
“From in or about August 2022 through November 9, 2022, in the Western District of Texas, Defendant WALTHER did knowingly and unlawfully commit one or more of the following offenses: Distribution / Receipt / Transportation / Possession of Child Pornography (18 U.S.C. § 2252A).”
Walther reportedly offered several apologies and made several admissions and claims during his interview with investigators, including that he did not know he was distributing child pornography.
He is being detained until a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Lane on Wednesday.
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