Goddard man sentenced to 15 years in child porn case

A Goddard man previously convicted for child sex crimes in a federal court in Texas must serve 15 years in prison for producing child pornography in Sedgwick County while he was a Kansas Air National Guardsman.

Paul F. Grimm was sentenced Thursday in a federal courtroom in Wichita, according to court documents. He pleaded guilty in December to two counts of sexual exploitation of a child.

In his plea, Grimm admitted to filming a 15-year-old girl when she was nude without her knowledge on Oct. 18, 2013, and then two days later recording a video of a different 15-year-old girl engaging in a sex act.

In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors dismissed five other counts accusing him of producing child pornography on other dates.

Grimm is already serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison for taking a 15-year-old girl he had an online relationship with across state lines to have sex with her in 2014. In that case, he paid for her to fly from Cleveland, Ohio, to Houston, drove her to Galveston and then took her on a Caribbean cruise, according to The Eagle’s news archives.

Authorities arrested him when the ship returned and a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent noticed that Grimm and the girl didn’t share a last name and weren’t related. The agent also found naked pictures of the girl on Grimm’s cellphone and sex supplies in his luggage, according to The Eagle’s news archives.

Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Marten is allowing Grimm to serve the sentence in the Sedgwick County case concurrently with — or at the same time as — the prison term he received in the Texas case, according to court records. Grimm is asking to be imprisoned at the Elkton facility in Ohio so he has the chance to participate in vocational training, sex offender treatment and a drug abuse program, records show.

At the time of his arrest, Grimm was working at McConnell Air Force Base as facilities manager for the Kansas Air National Guard’s 184th Intelligence Wing. He joined the Guard in 2003 after spending 13 years in the Air Force.

He was fired in 2014.

This story was originally published February 24, 2017 at 7:32 PM with the headline "Goddard man sentenced to 15 years in child porn case."