Convicted rapist sentenced for possessing child pornography
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IDAHO FALLS — A local man has been sentenced after his parole officer found child pornography on a hidden cell phone.
John Steven Castillo, 33, was sentenced to the maximum 10 years in prison for possession of child pornography. He was given four years fixed with six years indeterminate and a $1,000 fine.
“I searched this (presentencing investigation) from top to bottom and I couldn’t find one reference where you acknowledged that your behavior has anything to do with causing damage to those children who were used in the creation of that pornography,” District Judge Jon Shindurling said during sentencing.
Castillo pleaded guilty to two of the five counts of felony sexual exploitation of a child through possessing sexually exploitative material on April 17 as part of a plea agreement. Per the plea agreement, counts three through five were dropped and the prosecution and defense agreed to recommend no more than four years fixed.
Castillo was on felony parole for a 2005 rape conviction for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison with three years fixed and seven indeterminate. He completed a one-year rider program for that conviction.
He was arrested Dec. 2, 2017, when his parole officer found a cell phone Castillo had been trying to hide.
The officer took the phone and found what he believed to be child pornography. An investigator from the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Unit searched the phone thoroughly and found 2,200 sexually explicit images including 1,500 of which depicted prepubescent children.
The images were stored in a password protected applications such as Vaulty, an app specifically designed to hide pictures and Mega, a password protected cloud storage app, according to court documents.