Victims Get Justice After More Than 40 Years As 73-Year-Old Pedophile Is Sentenced To 300 Years For Child Porn

A 73-year-old Arkansas man was sentenced to 300 years in prison Wednesday in a child pornography case that included testimony from his 52-year-old former stepdaughter about the abuse she and her sister had endured as children over 40 years ago, according to TXK Today.

Ronald Antoniello of Fouke, Arkansas, was arrested in September of 2014 after investigators found over 3,000 photographs, computer images, and violence-filled videos in his home that depicted young girls getting raped or tortured. Antoniello denied that he had ever touched a child sexually and claimed his interest in child pornography was “curiosity.”

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Wednesday, Antoniello’s former step-daughter, who traveled from Florida to Texarkana for the sentencing phase of the court case, testified of sexual abuse she and her sister endured at Antoniello’s hands in the late 1970s in Florida. She cried as she recounted the abuse, which she said her mother chose to ignore.

“I would lie there and pretend to be asleep when he was doing things to my body,” she told the jury. “He had this laugh, this evil laugh, and the smell of him.”

Antoniello held onto evidence of his sexual abuse of his stepdaughters for over 40 years, which prosecutors used to show that the pedophile had possession of the child pornography for reasons other than curiosity. Photos were found of one of the sisters in a bikini and another in a First Communion dress that had also been altered to make the girls appear naked and were pasted onto the sexually explicit photo of another child abuse victim.

“We don’t just have her word,” Deputy Attorney Generals Julie Irwin told the jury about the sexual abuse of the girls. “He kept evidence of what he did 40 years after the fact.”

The 2014 search of Antoniello’s home led to the seizure of videos showing very young children engaged in sexual conduct with adult men and women, Texarkana Gazette reported. According to documents attached to the search warrant affidavit, the investigators seized computer equipment, photographs, sexual comic books and playing cards, CDs, DVDs and handwritten notes in the child porn investigation.

Deputy Attorney General Will Jones questioned Antoniello about computer folders on his computer with titles like, “10-year-old lover,” which contained images of his former stepdaughters, and the child abuse fantasy porn titled “Another third grader in my bed” that he downloaded from the website, “Perverts are us.”

The jury also watched clips of graphic, violent videos depicting the rape and torture of young girls as young as two years old, which the Arkansas Attorney General’s office discovered in online and forensic searches of Antoniello’s computer and photographs. The horrifying videos showed images of sodomy, rape, bondage and torture of children.

Jones told the jury that evidence of Antoniello’s evil kept compounding.

“Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it gets worse. It’s an evil that stains your soul, an evil that seeps into your soul and you can’t wash away.”

Photos of girls were also found on a digital camera in Antoniello’s home that the pedophile claimed were non-sexual. One set of photos showed a young girl in his hometown of Fouke stepping off a school bus and walking down the street. Another photo had been zoomed into body parts of a young girl in New York who was walking her dog.

The jury sentenced Antoniello to the maximum sentence on each of the 30 counts of distributing, possessing or viewing matter depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child, and they recommended to the judge that the terms run consecutively. The jury also assessed a $10,000 fine on each count for a total $300,000.

Antoniello’s former step-daughter sobbed as Circuit Judge Brent Haltom read the jury’s verdicts.

[Featured Image by Shanina/iStock]