A 19-year-old Rochester man will serve five years on supervised probation and be required to register as a predatory offender for possessing multiple videos of child sexual abuse material.
Chakong Yarthortou pleaded guilty to felony counts of possessing pornographic work of a minor under 13 as part of a plea deal that dismissed seven other similar charges.
District Judge Pamela King ordered that Yarthortou attend a sex offender program and not access the internet without approval, during an April 3, 2023, hearing. King also barred him from holding any position with authority over minors without the approval of his probation officer.
King ordered a stay of imposition in the case, meaning that if Yartortou successfully completes his probation, his felony charges will be reduced to a misdemeanors, though the court reserves the right to order him to prison if he violates his probation.
This is Yarthortou’s first conviction for a sex crime in Minnesota and the Olmsted County Attorney’s Office leans towards rehabilitation for first time offenders.
“In a first time nonviolent sex offense, we are far better off to have somebody kept here in the community, keep them safe. We can keep them on supervision for a whole lot longer and have better assurance that our communities are safer than if we send them to prison,” Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem told the Post Bulletin in March. “Repeat offenders I got no time for, they belong in prison.”
According to the criminal complaint:
An investigator with the Rochester Police Department found 27 videos of child sexual abuse material, commonly referred to as child porn, on electronic devices owned by Yathortou following a cyber tip that Yathortou had shared the material on Facebook.
Yathortou uploaded the videos multiple times.
Law enforcement found the IP addresses listed to accounts connected to Yathortou that uploaded and received the material were from Charter and Rochester Public Schools. Charter provided an address connected to the account that listed a residence in Rochester that Yathortou lived in.
During an April 4, 2022, search of his home, he told investigators that everyone in his home has access to his devices and knows his password.
The videos he is charged with possessing depict multiple acts of sexual assault and rape against juveniles ranging from a newborn baby to a juvenile between the ages of 5 and 7 years old.