County resident sentenced for child porn

Leaving his native St. Louis was part of the deal that Kenneth James Rothwell made in the mid-1990s, he testified Wednesday. He said he wouldn’t face prosecution for molesting some of his young relatives if he stayed away.

This is how Rothwell arrived in the Charlottesville area. He said he worked for a beverage manufacturer and was enlisted with the Army National Guard. The self-described loner’s free time was spent alone in his Albemarle County apartment, where he did family research online.

“I didn’t try to make friends so I wouldn’t be familiar with kids,” Rothwell testified.

However, children still were a part of Rothwell’s life. He testified Wednesday that he downloaded LimeWire, a peer-to-peer file-sharing program, and used it to download music and child pornography.

Rothwell, 49, was arrested in April and pleaded guilty in July to 10 counts of possession of child pornography in Albemarle Circuit Court. On Wednesday, Circuit Judge Cheryl Higgins sentenced Rothwell to an active prison term of two years and six months and ordered him to undergo sex offender treatment and not have unsupervised contact with minors.

Jon R. Zug, assistant commonwealth’s attorney, said in court that Rothwell was interested in boys and girls between the ages of 10 and 12. Authorities said Rothwell downloaded videos of children having sex with other children or adults and less graphic still images of children.

Rothwell testified that he looked at the images and deleted them.

“I’d stay away for a few weeks and, unfortunately, fall into the same pattern,” Rothwell said.

Authorities have said Rothwell was sharing the images and videos online, activity that caught the attention of the local Internet Crimes Against Children task force. Police executed a search warrant at Rothwell’s home March 25 and seized computers and media storage devices.

As a condition of his sentence, Rothwell can’t have a computer at home. Higgins sentenced Rothwell to five years in prison on each charge, but suspended most of that time. The judge also sentenced him to three years of supervised probation, 40 years of good behavior and ordered him to register his e-mail address and be monitored by GPS.

Rothwell has already served six months at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Defense attorney Sheila Haughey asked the judge to consider sentencing him to an active sentence of time served so Rothwell can get intensive sex offender treatment sooner.

“I want to get help,” Rothwell testified.