A former youth ski coach from Duluth received a prison term of 6½ years for possessing child pornography he made by morphing photos of children he coached, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota.
John Degelau, 28, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul after previously pleading guilty to two federal counts of possession and attempted possession of child pornography. Degelau’s prison sentence will be followed by 10 years of supervised release.
U.S. District Judge Jerry Blackwell also ordered Degelau to pay a $10,000 special assessment that will go to programs supporting victims of child pornography offenses.
Following a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Duluth police executed a search warrant in March 2023 and seized several of Degelau’s devices. The search turned up over 18,000 files of child pornography, much of which Degelau created by photoshopping images of children he used to coach into sexually explicit imagery.
Authorities also found images on Degelau’s devices of children swimming at a beach that appeared to have been taken from behind bushes or trees.
“A ski coach who used photos of children he coached to create child pornography is now headed to federal prison,” said acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson. “Today alone, three child predators were sentenced in federal court for absolutely abhorrent conduct. This epidemic of abuse we are seeing in Minnesota is vile, it is devastating, and it must end.”
Degelau has been listed as ineligible for coaching by the U.S. Center for SafeSport since April 2023.
The crime of turning nonexplicit images of children into child sexual abuse material has ramped up in recent years as criminals have begun to use artificial intelligence to generate the abusive imagery. The explicit images are flooding the internet and have become nearly indistinguishable from a real photo.
