HOLLIDAYSBURG — A Williamsburg area man who described himself in Blair County Court as eternally remorseful and repentant for accessing child pornography was sentenced Wednesday to one to two years in the county prison, followed by three years’ probation.

Anthony Stephen Bookhammer, 37, who has been out of jail on bail, was escorted to prison from the courtroom where Judge Jackie Bernard imposed a sentence that fell into the mitigated range of state sentencing guidelines.

While Bernard acknowledged Bookhammer’s remorse and his ongoing counseling, she declined to impose the probationary sentence with electronic monitoring sought by defense attorney Cory Ricci of Pittsburgh.

While probationary sentences were common in the past for this crime, Bernard said that’s changed and referenced state guidelines with 10 months’ incarceration as a mitigated sentence.

She also spoke of how the child victims, who suffer at the hands of their abusers, suffer a lifetime sentence of having their images distributed for viewing.

“This is a horrible, horrible offense,” Bernard said in referencing the images in Bookhammer’s case, including ones showing an adult raping or pretending to rape a female child.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher Jones asked Bernard to impose a state prison sentence of two to four years, falling in the standard range of the state sentencing guidelines, followed by three years’ probation.

In a presentence memorandum filed with Bernard, Jones said the children deserve justice.

“Their images and their suffering has been viewed over the internet and is only capable of being viewed because of (Bookhammer) and others like him who operate file sharing programs and internet forums to seek out this disturbing and vulgar victimization of children,” Jones wrote.

Ricci told the judge that Bookhammer, by pleading guilty in September to five counts of possession of child pornography, a second-degree felony, took responsibility for his actions.

Ricci also said his client, who has no prior criminal record, pursued counseling on his own and remains focused on rehabilitation.

“By his own admission, he allowed his past traumas to consume him for a period by abusing drugs and alcohol, which eventually led to the instance offenses,” Ricci said.

When addressing Bernard, Bookhammer spoke of how his actions had ruined his name, humiliated his family and caused him to lose a job and friends.

“I do not want my name to be a reflection of the darkest and saddest days of my life,” Bookhammer said. “I am eternally remorseful and repentant.”

Bernard, who reviewed letters in support of Bookhammer, told him his life doesn’t have to be defined by what happened.

“But that’s up to you,” the judge said.

Bookhammer’s arrest, on April 11, 2022, developed from an investigation that began Oct. 4, 2021, after the state Office of Attorney General received a CyberTipline Report from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. In that report, Synchronoss Technologies indicated that an unidentified user had uploaded images of child pornography using a cloud application.

An investigation led agents to identify a Williamsburg address from where the images had been uploaded, resulting in a search of that residence.

Agents also reported interviewing Bookhammer who, according to the charges, admitted to viewing and saving pornographic images to his cellphone and laptop computer.

The state initially charged Bookhammer with 42 counts of child pornography possession and an additional count of criminal use of a communication device. In exchange for Bookhammer’s guilty pleas to five offenses, the remaining charges will be withdrawn, Jones said.

Bernard imposed several conditions as part of Bookhammer’s sentence including no access to books, photos, videos or any other kind of sexually-explicit materials. He also must continue with counseling.

Bookhammer’s convictions also make him a Tier 1 offender under the state’s registration rules for sex offenders. He will need to regularly register his address and related information for 15 years with state police.

Mirror Staff Writer Kay Stephens is at 814-946-7456.