Anaheim church volunteer gets over 120 years for molesting girls

A former children’s ministry volunteer at an Anaheim church was sentenced last week to more than 120 years to life for molesting several girls, including one as young as 6 years old, and taking sexually suggestive photographs of one of the children he met through the church.

Todd Christian Hartman, 41, of Newport Beach, also was found in possession of hundreds of sexually explicit images of children that included stripping, dancing in their underwear and performing oral sex.

Hartman was convicted last month of four felony counts of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor under age 14, two counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration of a child 10 years old or younger, two counts of lewd acts upon a child 14 or 15 and one count of possession of child pornography.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Gassia Apkarian sentenced Hartman July 31 to 120 years to life plus an additional four years and four months in prison.

The DA’s office noted that California’s elder parole law allows parole eligibility for most convicted felons 50 or older who have served a minimum 20 years of their sentence.

“In 2016, Hartman contacted the father of two of his victims and admitted that he had molested one of the man’s daughters repeatedly after meeting through his volunteer work at the Anaheim Vineyard Church children’s ministry, beginning when the girl was just six years old,” according to the DA’s office. “Church leadership changed Hartman’s responsibilities after they became concerned about him repeatedly pulling children on to his lap.”

The former youth ministry volunteer was also convicted of sexually abusing the victim’s younger sister while taking sexually suggestive photos while the girl was on his lap. Hartman was also convicted of molesting a girls 12 and 14 years who “he groped and fondled their genitals repeatedly while they were at a 2009 sleepover at the Fullerton home of relatives of one of the girls,” according to the DA’s office.

In February 2015, the Newport Beach police in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security served a search warrant on Hartman’s Newport Beach home that he shared with his mother. Authorities obtained the warrant after tracking an IP address that had shared several child pornography images to Hartman’s residence, the DA’s office reported.

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