During an undercover operation, the suspect, who compared his child pornography addiction to a drug habit, detailed a history of sexually abusing young boys and sent explicit material to a detective posing as a 15-year-old.
A registered sex offender from North Carolina, now residing in Montana, is in custody facing a slew of new felony charges after an undercover Polk County Sheriff’s detective uncovered his alleged online predation of children, which included graphic boasts of sexually abusing children as young as seven.
Courtney Robert Stanhope, 39, of Baker, Montana, was arrested on September 30 by the Fallon County Sheriff’s Office on a warrant from Polk County, Florida. He awaits extradition to face 15 charges, including eight counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child, five counts of transmission of material harmful to a minor, and use of a computer to seduce a child.
The investigation began in September 2025, when detectives from the Polk County Sheriff’s Cyber Crimes Unit identified a suspect in Montana who was preying on children online. The suspect, later identified as Stanhope, engaged in an approximately four-and-a-half-hour online conversation with an undercover detective who was posing as a 15-year-old boy.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, Stanhope activated a self-destructing message feature and then initiated a sexually charged conversation. His online profile listed his “kinks” as “age play, first time, and sleep play.”
During the chat, Stanhope offered to teach the “boy” about sex and suggested he take up babysitting to form sexual relationships with children, advising him to “make a game of it so they think it’s just playing and super easy.” He claimed the youngest child he had sex with was eight years old and described bathing a friend’s seven-year-old son.
“If I had been ur uncle or dad I would have started teaching u stuff when u were really young,” Stanhope wrote in one excerpt from the conversation provided by authorities.
He also sent numerous images of child pornography to the undercover detective, claiming the boys in some of the images were children he was “teaching” to perform on each other or that he was sexually abusing himself. He stated his attraction is to boys between the ages of 6 and 17.
This is not Stanhope’s first encounter with the law for such crimes. He is a registered sex offender in North Carolina following a 2021 arrest for possession of child pornography, which occurred while he was serving in the U.S. Navy. At that time, he admitted to detectives that he had been addicted to child pornography since his teenage years, comparing it to a drug addiction. He pled guilty to 10 of 12 charges and was placed on supervised probation for three years, with a requirement to register as a sex offender for a minimum of 30 years.
Further investigation revealed that in 2024, Stanhope engaged in online chats with an undercover detective in Texas, during which he also shared child pornography. That investigation remains ongoing.
“Based on this suspect’s criminal history, criminal conduct, and disgusting conversations, there is no doubt in my mind he has sexually battered children,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. “We can only hope that if there are victims out there, they have the courage to come forward so that he can be appropriately charged. If you know this man and you have children, please contact your local law enforcement agency. He needs to never, ever see the outside of a prison.”
The Fallon County Sheriff’s Office has seized Stanhope’s electronic devices, which are being turned over to the Montana Department of Justice Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force for forensic analysis. Authorities say more charges are pending the outcome of that investigation.
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