Roseburg Man Sentenced To Nearly 15 Years In Child Exploitation Case

A Roseburg man will serve nearly 15 years in prison after an Oregon Department of Justice investigation found he had made more than 740,000 child sexual abuse files available through a public file-sharing network.

The Oregon DOJ announced this week that David Arthur Kelly, of Roseburg, was sentenced to 14 years and 8 months in state prison after pleading no contest to five counts of Encouraging Child Sexual Abuse in the First Degree.

According to the DOJ, the case involved one of the largest collections of child sexual abuse material uncovered in recent Oregon history. Investigators said the files were not only stored on Kelly’s computer, but were also set up to be shared freely over the internet.

“This is 740,000 instances of a child being exploited and that exploitation being spread,” said Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield. “This man didn’t just possess this material; he made it available to anyone who wanted it. This sentence reflects the severity of those choices, and I commend the dedicated investigators at SOCET and our ICAC Task Force who did the painstaking work to bring this case to justice.”

The case began with investigators from the Southern Oregon Child Exploitation Team, known as SOCET. Between June 2023 and August 2024, investigators made 19 separate connections to Kelly’s computer through a publicly accessible peer-to-peer file-sharing network and downloaded numerous child sexual abuse files, according to the DOJ.

The Oregon DOJ Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force took over the investigation in October 2024. Investigators later identified Kelly as the suspect and served search warrants at his Roseburg home.

During the search, investigators found a one-terabyte hard drive on Kelly’s laptop that contained more than 740,000 child sexual abuse files, according to the DOJ. The agency said the files were configured to be shared over the internet.

Kelly entered his plea before Douglas County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Johnson. During the hearing, Kelly told the judge he had “made a mistake.” According to the DOJ, Judge Johnson responded by pointing to the number of files involved and said Kelly’s actions were “not a mistake, it was a series of repeated decisions to exploit children.”

Kelly was indicted by a Douglas County Grand Jury on November 6, 2025, on ten counts of Encouraging Child Sexual Abuse in the First Degree. Under the stipulated sentence, he will serve 176 months in prison.

The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant Attorney General Elijah Michalowski of the Oregon DOJ Criminal Justice Division. Michalowski was appointed as a special prosecutor by Douglas County District Attorney Richard Wesenberg.