MADISON COUNTY, Ill. — A Godfrey pastor has been charged with knowingly distributing child pornography since the 1990s after a nearly year-long investigation.
Steven P. Tibbetts, 61, was the head pastor at Resurrection Lutheran Church in Godfrey, Illinois. His attorney Bill Luco told prosecutors Wednesday that in light of his charges, he has been“released of all duties, pastoral or otherwise, at Resurrection Lutheran.”
According to a federal criminal complaint, an FBI investigation began in August 2019 after the social media site Tumblr provided a cyber tip line report about one of its user accounts to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The account contained sexually explicit photos and videos of minors.
Several IP addresses of the account were tracked to Peoria, Illinois and the complaint was forwarded to the Peoria Police Department. The department followed up with a state search warrant for the account and found more than 3,600 photos and more than 120 videos, many of which fit the definition of child pornography.
While the investigation was ongoing, NCMEC received a separate tip from Twitter in February 2020 regarding one of its accounts that had uploaded two child pornography images.
The Tumblr and Twitter accounts were traced to Tibbetts, and a federal search warrant was executed at his Godfrey home on June 18.
During an interview, Tibbetts admitted to owning the Tumblr account and said he'd been trading child pornography since the 1990s through sites such as Tumblr, newTumbl and Twitter.
Investigators searched his computer and found several thousand more photos and videos of child pornography, according to the complaint.
Tibbetts made his initial appearance Wednesday at the federal courthouse in East St. Louis, where he was placed on electronic monitoring and released on a $10,000 unsecured bond pending trial.
A trial date has not been set.
