COLUMBUS, Ohio – Dennis Stopar, 65, of Flushing, Ohio, was sentenced in U.S. District Court Wednesday to 720 months in prison for sexually exploiting minors and possessing child pornography, according to Acting United States Attorney Kelly A. Norris, Southern District of Ohio.
According to court documents, between 2022 and 2023, Stopar sexually assaulted at least nine minor victims, both male and female, and created hundreds of videos and images of the horrific abuse. At the time of the sexual assaults, most of the minor victims were in foster care of a family member of Stopar.
In December 2023, while investigating a CyberTip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) regarding child pornography being uploaded to a Dropbox account at an address in Belmont County, law enforcement encountered Stopar. Further investigation revealed Stopar, a convicted sex offender, possessed child pornography he had created of one of the minor victims on his phone. Stopar was arrested and his electronic devices were subsequently processed via a federal search warrant, and he was charged federally in April 2024.
Forensic examinations on his devices revealed Stopar had filmed the sexual assaults of at least seven of the minor victims he had access to. Approximately 160 images and 12 videos of the identified victims being sexually assaulted by Stopar were recovered.
Stopar’s prior sex offense is a rape conviction for sexually abusing a victim beginning when the victim was approximately 6 years old until the victim was 16 years old.
The defendant pleaded guilty in this case in December 2024.
Kelly A. Norris, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio; Elena Iatarola, Special Agent in Charge, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Cincinnati Division; and Belmont County Sheriff James G. Zusack announced the sentence imposed by U.S. District Judge Michael H. Watson. Assistant United States Attorneys Emily Czerniejewski and Jennifer M. Rausch are representing the United States in this case.
