Carbon man sentenced to two years in state prison for child pornography

A Carbon County man was sentenced to a minimum of two years in a state correctional institution on Friday after previously admitting to processing and distributing child pornography.

Ryan Paul Yanchura, 23, of Nesquehoning was sentenced by Judge Joseph J. Matika to serve two to five years in a state prison and must register for the next 25 years as a sexual offender.

Yanchura was sentenced on two counts of distribution of child pornography and 10 counts of child pornography.

He was charged by the office of the Attorney General with a total of 32 counts, including disseminating photos/videos of child sex acts.

Deputy Attorney General Angela Lynn Raver said the computer crimes unit of the AG office filed the charges. She said Yanchura was viewing child pornography, specifically, viewing young children performing sex acts. He also shared the photos/videos with others on the internet.

At Friday’s sentencing, Raver asked Matika to sentence Yanchura to a high end of the state sentencing guidelines, noting he had been involved in viewing and distributing hundreds of images of children performing sex acts. Yanchura also admitted looking at the images for years.

Matika said these types of cases are troubling for a court. He said what was most disturbing to him was that Yanchura was distributing the images on the internet, further damaging the child.

Matika said he would take into consideration that Yanchura cooperated with authorities from the time he was confronted about the charges.

On the two counts of distributing, Matika imposed a 12- to 36-month term, and on the other counts, 12 to 24 months with the terms running consecutively.

Yanchura was also ordered to get both drug and alcohol and mental health evaluations, submit to a sexual offender’s evaluation, supply a DNA sample, follow all mandates of Megan’s Law concerning registration, pay court costs of about $1,000 and have no unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18 and have no unsupervised use of a computer without the consent of his state parole officer.

He was given credit for 212 days already spent in prison on the charges.