During the month of September 2025, Polk County Sheriff’s Cyber Crimes Unit detectives positively identified a Montana suspect who was preying on children online and obtained a warrant for his arrest for 15 charges related to sex crimes against children. On September 30th, he was taken into custody by the Fallon County (MT) Sheriff’s Office where he will await extradition back to Polk County.

Click here to hear Sheriff Judd's remarks on this arrest.

The suspect, 39-year-old Courtney Robert Stanhope of Baker, Montana, is a registered sex offender in North Carolina based on a 2021 arrest for possession of child pornography. During that time, he serving in the U.S. Navy. During an interview with NC detectives, he admitted to being addicted to child pornography since he was a teenager, and compared it to a drug addiction. He pled guilty to 10 of 12 charges and was placed on supervised probation for three years and required to register as a sex offender for a minimum of 30 years.

See article about his Navy career here

In 2024, Stanhope engaged in online chats with an undercover detective in Texas, during which he shared child pornography. That investigation is ongoing.

During the Polk County investigation, Stanhope had an approximately 4.5 hour long online conversation with an undercover detective posing as a 15-year-old boy. Stanhope’s online profile stated that his “kinks” were “age play, first time, and sleep play” and that he is “daddy/sporty.”

Stanhope activated the self-destruct feature of the chatting mobile app (where the messages delete automatically) then initiated a sexually charged conversation where he offered to teach the “boy” about sex. The suspect talked about having sex with children as young as seven years old and teaching children how to have sex with each other. He suggested that the 15-year-old should “get into babysitting like he did” to form sexual relationships with children, and to “make a game of it so they think it’s just playing and super easy.”

He sent numerous images of child pornography to the UC detective of children being sexually battered by an adult male. He told the UC that the boys in some of the images he sent were children he was “teaching” to perform on each other or that he was sexually abusing himself. He told the UC that he is attracted to boys between the ages of 6 and 17 years old. He told the UC that the youngest child he had sex with was 8 years old.

The following are excerpts from the chat:

Suspect: “if I had been ur uncle or dad I would have started teaching u stuff when u were really young”

Suspect: “yea my friends son really like me; he was 7 at the time; he always wanted me to give him a bath when I was watching him; too bad u weren’t there to help me give him baths woulda been hot to watch you practice on each other; so hot when boys play with each other”

“Based on this suspect’s criminal history, criminal conduct, and disgusting conversations, there is no doubt in my mind he has sexually battered children. 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.” – Grady Judd, Sheriff

Stanhope is in custody on the following Polk County charges:

·        8 counts promote sexual performance by a child
·        5 counts transmission of material harmful to minor
·        Use of a computer to seduce a child
·        Use of a two-way communication device in commission of felony

The Fallon County Sheriff’s Office has seized his electronic devices, which are being turned over to the Montana Department of Justice Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force for further investigation, and more charges are pending the outcome of that forensic analysis.