Thief River Falls, MN (trfnews.i234.me) – A Thief River Falls man was sentenced Monday, June 17 in Pennington County District Court for possessing an image of child pornography.
Jonathan Wyatt Hulst, 22, was sentenced to 72 months in prison for a felony charge of possession of pornographic work involving minors. Credit was given for 304 days served. His sentence is a downward durational departure. Another felony charge of possession of pornographic work involving minors was dismissed. For the former offense, Hulst was also ordered to serve 15 years of conditional release. He was ordered to supply a DNA sample. Hulst was also ordered to pay $135 in fees and fines.
Hulst had previously admitted three probation violations: accessing the internet without his probation agent’s approval, possessing pornographic material, and not completing sex offender treatment. At the time of the latest incident, Hulst was on probation for five felony counts of possession of pornographic work involving minors. He was sentenced for those offenses in March 2021.
On Monday, sentences were executed on those five prior charges, which ranged from 18 months in prison for one offense to 70 months in prison for one of the
other offenses. Those sentences are to be served concurrently with one another and the new sentence. He was given credit for 394 days served for each of those cases. He will no longer be on supervised probation after serving those sentences; however, a five-year conditional release will be in effect for each
offense.
The latest charges stemmed from an Aug. 17 meeting between the Pennington County sheriff’s investigator, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, and other law enforcement officers. According to the complaint, Nasr Ullah, 19, was allegedly disseminating child pornography via Telegram and received payment through PayPal. Multiple people, including Hulst, allegedly sent payments to him. Law enforcement learned that Hulst had paid Ullah for two transactions, amounting to $25 each, on Nov. 28, 2022.
Law enforcement and Hulst’s probation agent then went to Hulst’s home. His brother had hidden Hulst’s two cell phones and an Xbox at his request after
he knew law enforcement was there. His brother later showed where the items were hidden. One phone featured a phone number that Hulst’s probation agent didn’t have on file for him.
The probation agent searched a laptop computer seized at Hulst’s home. It contained an image of a nude prepubescent boy holding a pistol while engaging in anal sex with a nude woman. The image had been downloaded and saved on Aug. 13. The probation agent also found that Hulst had accessed multiple links to a particular website. The links were no longer available, but previews were. It appeared that the previews showed images of minors engaged in or performing sexual acts. The links were opened on Aug. 11 and 14.
Before being arrested, he called his mom. Hulst told her, “I’m sorry, Mom. I did this to myself. This is on me, Mom. I should have asked for help when I started to relapse.”
Law enforcement later executed a search warrant to complete a further search of Hulst’s laptop computer. The sheriff’s investigator saw more links to the
particular website. When hovering over some of the links, he saw images of what appeared to be juvenile children engaging in sexual acts. The sheriff’s investigator also reviewed a download of the computer’s hard drive. He saw “multiple photos of what appeared to be juvenile children engaging in sexual acts or posing in sexually suggestive poses.”
Hulst was charged with possessing two particular images. One image featured a prepubescent, completely naked female whose breasts were exposed. Hulst
pled guilty to and was sentenced for possessing that image.
The dismissed charge stemmed from another image featuring a naked prepubescent girl in a suggestive pose. That image contained an attached zoomed-in snapshot of the girl’s vagina and anus.