A 40-year-old Coos Bay man was sentenced to 17 years in federal prison Tuesday after admitting he coerced children into producing sexually explicit material, then tried to profit by distributing the files online while posing as one of his own victims. Thomas Owen Barnett will also serve 15 years of supervised release once he gets out, according to federal prosecutors.
U.S. Attorney Scott E. Bradford said Barnett used the internet to exploit children both within the United States and abroad, a case that also reached across international borders. As reported by KATU, Barnett asked a man in another country to make and send child sexual abuse material involving that man's own young child. The Department of Justice, in a press release, said Barnett was convicted of using one minor to produce abuse material and of trying to use a second minor for the same purpose.
Between September and December 2023, Barnett encouraged a minor to make and send him explicit materials, according to the KATU report. Nearly a year later, he distributed those files on an online platform and tried to get money for them, the outlet notes. Prosecutors say Barnett allegedly posed as the minor victim online, apparently to disguise his own role in soliciting and spreading the material.
Charges Trace Back to a 2024 Indictment
Barnett's guilty plea in May capped a case that began with a four-count federal indictment returned by a grand jury in Eugene on February 20, 2025, charging him with sexual exploitation of a child, attempted sexual exploitation of a child, and possession and distribution of child pornography, per the Department of Justice. He pleaded guilty on May 19, 2026, to two counts of sexual exploitation of a child, each carrying a mandatory minimum of 15 years and up to 30 years in prison, the department said in a statement. Court documents filed in March 2025 stated that Barnett used the platforms Kik and Instagram in September 2024 to solicit child sexual abuse material, advertise it for sale, and pose as a young man or a minor female to deceive victims; prosecutors noted he requested materials depicting infants.
Before the federal case, booking records reviewed by Feral Humans show Barnett had already been arrested in Coos County in October 2024 on state charges including first-degree online sexual corruption of a child, luring a minor, unlawful possession of methamphetamine, and possession of a prohibited firearm. He was later arrested on an FBI warrant in North Bend in January 2025, the outlet reported.
Bradford: Barnett Hid Behind a Victim's Identity
Bradford said children deserve to be safe both online and in their own homes, and that Barnett hid his identity while forcing children to be exposed, according to the case details cited by KATU. The 17-year sentence and accompanying 15 years of supervised release reflect the statutory framework under 18 U.S.C. § 2251, which sets a mandatory minimum of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years per count for coercing a minor into producing sexually explicit media, according to a summary from AnneMarie Odom Law.
The Department of Justice said the investigation was led by the FBI, with direct operational assistance from the North Bend Police Department and the Coos County Sheriff's Office, illustrating the coordination between federal agents and coastal Oregon police that made the case possible. The prosecution was carried out under Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative created in 2006 to pool federal, state, and local resources against technology-facilitated child exploitation, a framework Hoodline has previously detailed in a separate Oregon coast case.
Part of a Broader Pattern on the Oregon Coast
Barnett's sentencing follows a string of similar prosecutions along the southern Oregon coast. In March, the Oregon Department of Justice's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and local law enforcement reported multiple arrests and convictions in Coos County involving child sexual abuse material, resulting in state prison terms of 90 to 96 months under Measure 11 mandatory minimums. Nationally, the scale of the problem is stark: the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children's CyberTipline received 20.5 million reports in 2024 containing nearly 63 million files of suspected child sexual exploitation, according to Thorn.org.
Bradford took office in July 2025 as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of Oregon after an 18-year career as a Department of Justice prosecutor, having previously led the office's criminal units. The Barnett case is the latest in a series of Oregon federal child exploitation sentencings this year, following a Coos County man's 98-month sentence for sharing 15,000 files in June and a Gearhart man's 15-year sentence in August for hiding cameras to film a child victim. The identity and status of the adult overseas whom Barnett tried to coerce into producing abuse material involving his own young child remain unresolved, according to the Department of Justice's account of the case.
