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A Mitchell man faces decades in prison after he pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual exploitation of a child and one count of possession of child sexual abuse material.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt last week sentenced Bryan Lee Fish, 33, to 50 years in federal prison, followed by a lifetime of supervised release.
According to court documents, between June 2022 and September 2023, Fish sexually abused three children under the age of 12, including a toddler, photographed the abuse, and distributed the images online.
The victims, all related to Fish, were in his custody and care at the time.
On Sept. 29, 2023, the Indiana State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force received alerts from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children indicating that an X (formerly known as Twitter) account linked to Fish was sharing newly produced child sexual abuse material.
A search of his residence uncovered two cell phones containing folders labeled with the victims’ names, explicit images of the children, and more than 3,000 files of child sexual abuse material involving other unidentified minors, including infants and toddlers, as well as CGI and Anime.
Following his arrest, another relative disclosed that Fish had sexually abused her as a child, beginning at age five.
“This predator not only exploited three young children entrusted to his care, but he also preserved and shared that abuse,” Tom Wheeler, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana, said in a news release. “Distributing these images is especially insidious because it fuels further exploitation, encourages other offenders to create more material through abuse, and ensures the victims are haunted by the knowledge that their worst experiences live on indefinitely for predators’ gratification,”
The U.S. Secret Service, FBI, Indiana State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office, and Lawrence County Prosecutor’s Office investigated this case.
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