A trucker from Indiana who recorded himself having sex with a 14-year-old Butler County girl and paid her for it will spend 37 years in federal prison.
U.S. District Judge Christy Wiegand on Friday imposed that term on Roderick King, 33.
King, charged with sex trafficking of a child and other crimes, represented himself at trial in the summer in U.S. District Court. It didn’t go well for him. A jury convicted him after about an hour of deliberations.
Sex offenders charged in federal court usually plead guilty because the evidence is typically overwhelming. So it was for King, but he still chose to go to trial and also elected to be his own lawyer, almost always a mistake.
After his conviction, he continued to attack the government’s case with various motions, all of which the judge tossed.
Over a three-year period starting in 2017, King paid the girl in cash for sex on 10 occasions and recorded some of the acts. He communicated with her over Snapchat and Facebook during that time. At the trial, the U.S. attorney’s office presented those messages, which showed how he maintained control over her.
King bought the girl shoes, clothes and other items that teenage girls like in an effort to groom her for sex.
Evidence at trial showed that in July 2017, King had sex with her in the cab of his truck and then paid her a few hundred dollars, prosecutors said. He also produced child porn by recording at least two videos of his sexual encounters with her.
In 2020, she came forward to police in Butler Township and told officers what King had been doing. The case was later adopted by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and a federal grand jury indicted King in 2021.
On the stand, she told the jury that she came forward with her story because “30-year-old men shouldn’t be having sex with little kids.”
King has a prior conviction in state court for child luring. Besides the prison term, Judge Wiegand ordered that he will be on probation for the rest of his life. He’ll also have to pay a $17,000 fine.
In imposing the sentence, the judge said King’s actions were “extraordinarily serious” and noted his lack of remorse.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
