By Hub City Times staff

MARSHFIELD – A Marshfield man was sentenced Oct. 4 to 50 years in federal prison for producing child pornography involving an infant and toddler during the summer of 2017.

Mark E. Bartz, 48, was sentenced by United States District Judge William Conley of the United States District Court for the Western half of Wisconsin. Bartz pleaded guilty on July 3 to two counts of producing child pornography.  In addition to his prison sentence, he was placed under 25 years of supervised release.

According to court documents, Bartz produced child pornography involving a toddler and infant, including visual depictions of him engaging in sexual conduct with the infant.  Bartz was also the administrator of online chat groups devoted to the trading of child pornography, and posted the sexually explicit images he produced to those groups. He also engaged in sexually conduct with other minors over the course of decades.

At the sentencing, Judge Conley said the defendant is a serial child abuser and called Bartz’s conduct among the most abhorrent crimes a person could commit.

The investigation was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, launched in May 2006 by the Justice Department.