Former Anderson Co. band leader jailed for producing child porn – The Advocate-Messenger

A former band director and teacher at Anderson County High School was sentenced to 25 years in prison in U.S. District Court in Lexington after pleading guilty to producing child pornography.

According to his plea agreement, 38-year-old Patrick Howard Brady used text messages, FaceTime and a social media app (VSCO) to engage a minor in a romantic and sexual relationship. Specifically, beginning in the summer of 2022, Brady and the victim, who was a high school freshman according to local media, began a sexually explicit relationship that began via text messages, calls and FaceTime and eventually occurred in person several times, including at the high school.

Law enforcement began investigating the relationship between Brady and the victim in May 2023. When police arrested Brady and seized his cellphone, the VSCO application had been removed from his phone. Brady admitted that on two or more occasions, he knowingly used a minor victim to engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of broadcasting live visual depictions of those acts.

Under federal law, Brady must serve 85 percent of his sentence. After his release from prison, he will be under the supervision of the U.S. Parole Board for the rest of his life.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI, the Kentucky Attorney General's Office, the Kentucky State Police, and the Anderson County Sheriff's Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Melton is prosecuting the case on behalf of the United States.

The U.S. Attorney's Office prosecuted this case as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched by the Department of Justice in 2006 to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), Project Safe Childhood pools federal, state, and local resources to better find, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who exploit children over the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.

For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.