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A 71-year-old man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison at U.S. District Court in Ashland on Monday after being convicted in January for distributing and possessing child pornography, which he had apparently collected for decades.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Kentucky, evidence presented at trial established that between Oct. 5-6, 2020, Adam Fonso Childers of Ashland was found to have distributed multiple files of child pornography, using a peer-to-peer file sharing network.

A search warrant was then obtained and found Childers had acquired multiple forms of media containing child pornography over decades. This included magazines he acquired in the 1970s, binders of printed materials, multiple disks, seven external hard drives and a desktop computer.

Childers possessed hundreds of thousands of images and videos of child pornography that included depictions of minors under the age of 12 engaged in sexually explicit activity.

“This case involved an enormous amount of child sexual abuse material, collected over many years, and involved countless victims,” said Carlton S. Shier, IV, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky. “Protecting our children from this despicable sexual abuse is a core priority for our office and is essential to the safety of our communities. I want to commend our law enforcement partners, whose dedicated and difficult work made this prosecution and sentence possible – and made our children safer.”

The investigation was conducted by the FBI, Kentucky State Police and the Ashland Police Department.

“The exploitation of innocent children is one of the most heinous crimes the FBI investigates,” said Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge, FBI Louisville Field Office. “Today’s sentence reinforces that the FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to aggressively pursue those who prey upon our most vulnerable victims and will stop at nothing to hold them accountable.”

Under federal law, Childers must serve 85 percent of his prison sentence and will be under the supervision of the U.S. Probation Office for life. He was also ordered to pay more than $175,000 in restitution and financial assessments.