photo by: KBI Sex Offenders Registry

April Caitlin Ticer

A woman was sentenced to probation on Wednesday in Douglas County District Court for attempting to obtain hundreds of images of child pornography on a laptop shared with her husband.

April Caitlin Ticer, 25, of Kansas City, Kansas, pleaded no contest to two felony counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a child in September for conducting an internet search sometime between October 2019 and September 2020 for visual depictions of children under the age of 14 engaging in sexually explicit conduct, according to charging documents. The crime is a low-level felony.

Ticer was originally facing three counts of sexual exploitation of a minor by promoting a sexually explicit performance of a child under the age of 14 and an additional 50 counts of exploitation of a minor-possession of media of a child under the age of 18, but the additional charges were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.

On Wednesday, Judge Sally Pokorny sentenced Ticer to 12 months on each count to run concurrently and then suspended the sentence to 24 months of probation, in accordance with Kansas sentencing guidelines. Pokorny said that Ticer had no criminal history according to a pre-sentence investigation.

Ticer’s defense attorney, Michelle David, said that Ticer has already obtained a sex offender evaluation and is planning to soon begin counseling as recommended by the evaluation.

The state was represented by Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden, who asked the court to follow the plea agreement and to give Ticer the standard sentence.

Ticer has been free on a $25,000 own-recognizance bond since her arrest in April.

As previously reported by the Journal-World, the charges against Ticer and her husband, Brandon Michael Torneden, 38, of Kansas City, Kansas, were filed after Lawrence police were tipped off by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in August 2020 to more than 600 images of children under the age of 8 on a laptop registered to Ticer and Torneden, according to a police affidavit in support of their arrests.

The two were charged in March 2021, but the charges against Ticer were dropped temporarily until her husband’s charges were resolved in March of this year, when Torneden pleaded no contest to two felony counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a child. He was sentenced in May to 24 months in prison that Pokorny then suspended to 24 months of probation, in accordance with sentencing guidelines. The charges against Ticer were refiled in April.

Both Ticer and Torneden are required to register as sex offenders for the rest of their lives.

photo by: KBI Sex Offenders Registry

Brandon Michael Torneden