A Butler County, Missouri man has pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography after being found with child sexual abuse material at a halfway house. Leslie Bryan Clark, 59, entered his plea Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau.
Clark admitted that on June 13, 2025—the day he was scheduled to be released from the halfway house—a Cybertip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children led investigators to discover that he had uploaded child sexual abuse material using the Kik app. When approached by a probation officer, Clark turned over his phone, which contained video clips depicting minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.
Clark previously pleaded guilty in 2017 to one count of possession of child pornography and was sentenced to 10 years in prison followed by 15 years of supervised release.
He is set for sentencing on April 20. Due to his prior conviction, the current charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison and could result in up to 20 years. Clark also admitted violating the terms of his supervised release related to his earlier conviction and will be sentenced for that violation as well.
The case was investigated by the U.S. Probation Office of the Eastern District of Missouri and the FBI. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack Koester is handling the prosecution.
“This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc,” according to the press release.
