MONTICELLO, Iowa — A former youth basketball coach admitted to having and capturing sexually explicit images of minors.
On Thursday, October 18, the former coach, 42-year-old Gregory Scott Stephen pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of children, possession and transportation of child pornography, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney Marc Krickbaum.
Stephen used to be the co-director of Barnstormers Basketball in Iowa. He worked with kids between 4th and 12th grades, working in administration and as a coach.
In a plea agreement, Stephen admitted that he pretended to be young girls online to convince minor boys to send sexually explicit images of themselves, according to Krickbaum.
While pretending to be a teenage girl, Stephen would contact minor boys and offer to exchange nude pictures, the statement said. He “suggested the type of sexually explicit images the minor males should produce.”
According to the statement, Stephen also admitted to traveling with a boy who was either 11 or 12 to basketball tournaments and games. He admitted to taking him to his lake house in Delhi, Iowa, where he captured inappropriate imagery with sexually explicit contact with the child. The images were saved on a hard drive owned by Stephen.
“Stephen admitted in the plea agreement he possessed on a hard drive approximately 400 file folders with titles in the last and then first names of different minor males,” read the Krickbaum’s statement. All of the folders had images of nude boys showing sexually explicit content; some of them showed minor boys who were “unconscious with their pants pulled down and exposed.”
Stephen also admitted that he used a hidden camera to secretly record nude boys in hotel rooms in Ankeny, Iowa and in Illinois, Krickbaum said. The images showed the boys coming in and out of the shower.
“None of the minor males were aware they were being recorded,” read the statement.
Sentencing has not yet been scheduled, but Krickbaum said Stephen faces between 15 and 180 years in prison.
