by Skylar Laird, SC Daily Gazette
January 14, 2026
COLUMBIA — Former Rep. RJ May will spend 17 1/2 years in prison for distributing videos of children being sexually abused, a federal judge decided Wednesday.
After hearing from a tearful May, members of his family and a statement from one of the children shown in the videos May shared, U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie opted for a slightly lesser sentence than the 20 years federal prosecutors requested but significantly more than the five years the 39-year-old proposed for himself.
May, a West Columbia Republican and founding member of the ultra-conservative Freedom Caucus, pleaded guilty in September to sending videos depicting child sexual abuse over a five-day span in April 2024.
After his release from prison, May will spend 20 years under supervised release, with federal parole officers monitoring his actions to be sure he doesn’t reoffend. He must pay a fee of $58,500 to the children shown in the videos he sent who government officials were able to reach.
Prosecutors originally asked for a restitution amount of $73,000, plus a lifetime of supervision following his release. May’s defense attorneys negotiated lower payments to three of the survivors in an effort to make it more likely May is actually able to pay back the full amount.
May will also have to register as a sexual offender for life. And, as a convicted felon, the former campaign consultant will no longer be allowed to vote or hold office.
May resigned in August from the House seat he’d held since 2020. His successor, Lexington County pastor John Lastinger, was sworn in Tuesday, the first day of the legislative session.
This case was “more severe than any other” involving child sexual abuse materials that Currie said she’d seen in more than three decades as a federal judge. The 220 videos May sent 479 times “include incest, force, rape, pain and humiliation,” Currie said.
May’s messages suggested a much longer history of sending and receiving videos than the five days investigators were able to prove, she said. He knew who to ask and what to ask for to get the videos he wanted, and he seemed to have no trouble switching from the illicit messages to business calls, she said.
“This was not a one-off,” Currie said.
For 15 minutes, a tearful May asked Currie for leniency in his sentence, often echoing a six-page letter he submitted ahead of the hearing. He apologized to the people he harmed, including the children in the videos he sent, as well as his own family and friends.
Sniffling into his microphone, May described a chaotic childhood that led to long-unaddressed mental health issues. His marriage stagnated because of his untreated depression and anxiety, and he and his wife of 20 years often slept separately and spent their evenings on their phones instead of interacting with each other, he said.
During one of those nights, May began looking at pornography, first with adults and then with children, he said. Testosterone injections prescribed to help with a hormone imbalance May thought was contributing to his mental health problems increased his sex drive, leading to more pornography viewing, he said.
Pornography became an addiction for May, who sought out more extreme videos “out of morbid curiosity,” he said.
“Addiction drove me somewhere I never meant to go, somewhere I never wanted to go,” May told Currie.
The former legislator acknowledged that his political career and his campaign consulting business were both over. His wife filed for a divorce. He will not see his two children, ages 7 and 3, grow up.
“It took me 40 years to build a life I was proud of, and I destroyed it in an instant,” May said.
May is paying a price for his crimes, which caused suffering for the children in the videos he sent, said prosecuting attorney Elliott Daniels.
Daniels read a letter one survivor submitted ahead of the hearing. The woman described years of trauma made worse knowing people are still watching and sharing videos of her being raped and abused as a child. She struggles to leave her house alone out of fear that someone might recognize her in public from those videos, Daniels said.
May “argues his normal life has been taken from him?” Daniels said. “She concludes that her normal life has been taken from her.”
May pledged to do everything possible to help the people he hurt after leaving prison. He has already started creating a budget for how much money he must earn to pay his restitution and send money to his family, and he hopes to form a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the impact sharing videos of child sexual abuse can have for the children shown in them, he said.
Wearing the same orange-and-white jumpsuit as he has during every court appearance since his arrest, May did not react when Currie read his sentence.
After the hearing ended and Currie wished him luck, May exchanged a few brief words, inaudible to reporters, with his crying father. With shackled wrists, May blew his sister a kiss.
As U.S. marshals began to lead May out of the courtroom, his father called after him, “We love you.”
“Love you, too,” May replied.
Prosecutors’ arguments
For at least five days in April 2024, May lived a double life, prosecutors argued Wednesday and in court filings leading up to the hearing. Within seconds, May could switch from messages about campaigns, legislation and holiday greetings to videos of prepubescent children being forced to perform sex acts.
As a legislator, May frequently voted in favor of bills intended to protect children, including from the exact sort of crimes he later pleaded guilty to committing, prosecutors said.
“In public, he represented more than 41,000 Lexington County residents in the legislature; in private, he abused infants, toddlers, and prepubescent minors in child pornography,” prosecutors wrote in court filings.
Although May’s video spree seemed to span less than a week based on the evidence investigators were able to recover, prosecutors have long argued this likely wasn’t his only foray into that world.
Prosecutors: App linked to ex-Rep. May sent child sexual abuse videos worldwide
Messages May sent from a messaging account under the username “joebidennnn69” referenced encrypted apps often used to exchange illegal videos because their overseas owners prevent investigators from accessing their data, according to court documents.
During the five days investigators could identify, May sent videos of child sexual abuse to people in 18 states and six countries. He sought out videos of children as young as toddlers being abused by their parents, according to court filings. The children shown were put in “nightmarish scenarios,” Daniels said, with videos showing their “pain, tears, humiliation and degradation.”
“All of the victims in May’s videos were too young to protect themselves, but many were old enough such that they will remember their abuse,” prosecutors wrote in court filings. “The content May sought out, possessed, and distributed represents some of the most degrading and damaging content that comes before any court.”
For nine survivors of videotaped child sexual abuse, including eight who appeared in videos May sent, the pain is compounded by knowing strangers still see what they went through and often get pleasure from it, they said in statements to the court.
Some of the survivors, referred to under pseudonyms to protect their identities, have children of their own, they said in their statements.
“There is not one day that goes by that I don’t think, with hatred, about the sick and disgusting people who view, trade, save, and get off on my abuse when I was just a little kid and couldn’t defend myself,” one survivor wrote. “It is sickening.”
If May really wanted to help the 62 children who appeared in the videos he sent, he would have reported those videos instead of disseminating them further, Daniels said.
“He distributed those 62 children because he wanted 63, 64, 65,” Daniels said.
Prosecutors tracked down 12 children shown in videos May sent and received who opted not to submit statements of their own.
Investigators also found videos on May’s devices recovered through a search warrant that showed May having sex with young women during a trip to the country Colombia, according to court documents. Prosecutors argued the videos showed May forcing young women to have sex with him, though May’s attorneys contended the sex was consensual.
Agents have not been able to track down the women or learn how old they were, according to the court filing. May faces no charges related to those videos, but prosecutors felt they showed his character and underscored their argument for a lengthy prison sentence, they said.
“May, of all people, knew better,” prosecutors wrote. “He was in a unique position to understand the harm and the consequences he would face, yet he still chose to distribute child pornography. Hundreds of times over.”
Currie did not consider the videos of May from Colombia in deciding his sentence, since the two sides disagreed over what they showed, she said.
May’s argument
For six months, unless he was in court, May has spent every hour of the day alone and all but one locked in a 96-square-foot cell. He has access to a tablet he can use to message relatives, read digital books, listen to music and take online classes, but that’s all.
May spends most of his days lying in bed, he wrote in his six-page letter to Currie and repeated Wednesday in court. Other inmates can hear him crying through the air vents, they wrote in letters of their own.
May’s political ambitions and career both ended with his guilty plea, and he has “been made penniless,” he wrote. May struggles to sleep, and when he does, he often dreams of his arrest last June.
“The sounds of my crying children, the indescribable look on my wife’s face, and the sight of tears streaming down my son’s cheeks are vividly recalled nightly,” May wrote.
How former Rep. RJ May is preparing from jail for trial on charges of sending child sex abuse videos
May’s attorneys emphasized that none of his charges suggested he harmed any children directly. He didn’t organize his illicit videos and photographs, as is common among people who collect such images, suggesting this was a brief, albeit heinous, lapse of judgment, his attorneys argued.
“Though it is beyond difficult to explain his ultimate conduct, RJ has accepted responsibility for his actions and in looking back on his actions recognizes that he had (or still has) addiction problems,” his attorneys wrote. “Like so many of us, RJ was addicted to screens whether because of work or family obligations. Furthermore, he admits he was also addicted to viewing pornography on those screens.”
In drug cases involving addiction, felons often have families, friends and potential jobs waiting for them once they get out of prison, said federal public defender Jenny Smith. People convicted of cases involving child sexual abuse usually have no such support.
“Their futures are pretty bleak,” Smith said. “They’re carrying an immense amount of shame.”
The natural consequences of May’s actions are enough to make him recognize the wrongness of his actions, his attorneys wrote. He vowed in his letter never to reoffend, and his attorneys consider it unlikely he would reoffend.
“RJ has experienced profound loss,” his attorneys wrote. “He will not return to the home and family he knew. He will not be a father to his children. His sin and shame has been broadcast throughout the country. He is shattered.”
May’s father and sister
May’s father, Robert May, is still struggling to wrap his head around his son’s actions, he told Currie on Wednesday. None of what he read in the court documents sounded like the man he knew, who was “a kind, caring and helpful son, brother, father, cousin and nephew,” Robert May said.
He spent Wednesday morning sitting in what used to be his son’s home office, looking at a pile of toys in the corner and thinking about how his grandchildren won’t get to play with their father, he said.
“I am totally broken,” Robert May said.
His son’s actions were sick, he said. “But he is a good person,” Robert May said, his voice cracking as he turned to look at his son. “He really is.”
When Megan May was young, she would knock on her older brother’s door late at night and ask to sleep in his room because she was scared of the dark, she told Currie. She fondly remembered looking out her brother’s window with him at night to see the moon and the stars, which was a bright spot in a childhood marred with frequent abuse and neglect in the care of their mother, she said.
“I had my big brother to shield me from horrible situations,” Megan May said.
With therapy, spiritual guidance and support, May said she hopes her brother “can be in all areas of his life what he’s been to me,” she said.
After May’s prison sentence, he hopes to build a tiny home on his father and stepmother’s 29-acre farm in Virginia, where he was born. There, he wants to revive his retired father’s landscaping business to earn money for his restitution costs and to send to his ex-wife and children.
May also outlined plans to start a nonprofit dedicated to spreading awareness of the harms child sexual abuse material causes and the consequences people can face for exchanging photos and videos of child abuse.
“I know building a future won’t be easy,” May wrote. “There will be no fancy cars or big houses. No glamorous vacations or expensive meals. It will take hard work and dedication to overcome my failures.
“But if anyone can do it, I can. I’ve not given up on myself and I’m asking this Court not to give up on me either. I can once again be a productive member of society, a beacon of hope and motivation to those similarly situated.”
Currie’s decision won’t end May’s legal troubles. He’s also facing state charges of evading income taxes for three years, amounting to $14,637. That case, which could carry up to a year in state prison for each year of unpaid taxes, is ongoing, though May confessed as much during his Wednesday hearing.
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