An 87-year-old Arkansas pastor has been declared not guilty of charges related to child sex abuse material (CSAM). Throughout the two-day trial, defense attorneys for Rocky Goodwin maintained that his personal devices had been infested with malware.
Editor’s note: This article contains details about child sex abuse that some readers might find disturbing and/or triggering.
Goodwin is the pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Warren, Arkansas. He was initially arrested in August 2024. The arrest came after an investigation was launched following a 2023 tip from an analyst for the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.
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The analyst was alerted when Microsoft reported that a device belonging to Goodwin had violated “terms of service for using Bing reverse image search to upload an image of Child Sexual Abuse Materials (CSAM) to his account in order to receive other Bing image search results of similar CSAM material on May 23, 2023.”
Investigators were subsequently alerted to two more incidents of CSAM from devices associated with Goodwin and concluded that the images were being viewed from inside Goodwin’s residence.
Authorities seized Goodwin’s devices and discovered a compressed zip file containing files labeled with “sexually graphic descriptions,” including one file that was labeled “12 year old girl.”
Throughout the investigation and following his arrest, Goodwin denied having any knowledge of the CSAM but also said that he didn’t know of anyone else who had access to his devices.
Goodwin was charged with 10 felony counts, including distributing, possessing, and viewing CSAM.
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During the trial, Goodwin’s defense team emphasized the possibility that Goodwin’s devices had been “hacked.” While prosecutors presented evidence that the computer had not been infected with malware, Goodwin’s attorney argued, “When it went to the state police and they did the forensic review, they did not even try to get into the actual laptop. Instead, they made a copy of the content so that the malware would not infect.”
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