Lawrence man, a ‘persistent sex offender,’ sentenced to more than 7 years in child pornography case

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Bruce Stanley Springsteen is pictured at his sentencing hearing in Douglas County District Court on March 6, 2023.

A Lawrence man who was already on probation for sex crimes was sentenced on Monday in Douglas County District Court to more than seven years in prison in a child pornography case.

The man, Bruce Stanley Springsteen, 65, was convicted in January, after entering a no contest plea, of one count of attempted sexual exploitation of a child. Springsteen was attempting to access images of abused children on June 19, 2022, according to charging documents. He was on probation at the time of the incident after a conviction in 2021 for three felony counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a child for crimes committed between 2018 and 2019.

Judge Stacey Donovan sentenced Springsteen to 68 months in prison, or more than five and a half years, for the 2022 charge, and she revoked his probation and ordered him to serve 24 months for his 2021 conviction, for a total of 92 months, or more than seven and a half years, with those sentences to run consecutively. Donovan said that with his criminal history he would have been facing 34 months if this were his first sex offense, but since he is a “persistent sex offender,” a special rule applies and that sentence was doubled, in accordance with Kansas sentencing guidelines.

During the sentencing Monday, Springsteen said he was sorry for his conduct. He said that he was worried about his own declining mental health and that he believed he had symptoms of dementia. Springsteen said that his wife was also exhibiting such symptoms and that now that he was going to prison she would be alone. He then asked for leniency and for his sentences to run concurrently.

Deputy District Attorney Joshua Seiden objected to any departure from the plea agreement and said that the consecutive prison terms were previously agreed upon. According to court records, as part of the plea agreement the state dismissed 14 counts of sexual exploitation of a child in lieu of one lesser count of attempted exploitation.

After the hearing, Springsteen was returned to the Douglas County Jail, where he has been in custody since his arrest in July.

Prior to Springsteen’s convictions, he spent about eight days working as a paraeducator at Pinckney Elementary, from Sept. 17 through Sept. 25, 2015, and he worked as a dishwasher at KU’s Hilltop Child Development Center for 15 years. Lawrence school district spokeswoman Julie Boyle said the school district was “unaware of any concerns raised about the professional conduct of this individual” during his employment with the district, and KU spokeswoman Erinn Barcomb-Peterson said that “he had no unsupervised access to children” when he worked at Hilltop.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Bruce Stanley Springsteen is pictured March 6, 2023, in Douglas County District Court just after he was sentenced to 92 months in prison in a child pornography case.