A married couple from Missouri will spend lengthy stints in separate federal prisons after pleading guilty to grooming a Virginia teen and repeatedly sexually abusing her.
Justin Curtright, 41, was sentenced today to 45 years in federal prison. His wife, Christin Curtright, 33, was sentenced to 27 years.
The Curtrights, of Springfield, Missouri, pleaded guilty in 2025 to sexual exploitation of a minor and transportation of a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity.
According to court documents, Justin Curtright told his wife that he had a fantasy of sexually abusing a teen runaway.
He first contacted the then-13-year-old victim in May 2024 on Discord, an online video chatting platform, later introduced the victim to his wife, and from that point, the three talked extensively, both online and by phone.
Per evidence presented at their trials, the Curtrights engaged in sexually explicit acts on camera while video chatting with the victim and urged her to do the same – and also pressured her to not tell her family about her contact with the Curtrights.
The adults, at this point, talked the victim into traveling back to Missouri with them, and in July, the Curtrights made the 15-hour drive to southern Virginia to pick her up.
While on the road back to Missouri, the Curtrights took turns sexually abusing the victim in the back of their van.
Once they reached their apartment, they continued their sexual exploitation of the teen for several more days.
The day of the abduction, the girl’s mother returned from work to find her missing. The victim had left her mother a note “stating she was running away.”
The mother reported her daughter’s disappearance to police.
Days later, officers with the Springfield Police Department went to the Curtrights’ apartment, where they found the victim hiding in the back of a closet in the Curtrights’ bedroom.
The victim had an ID card that Justin Curtright gave her, which falsely represented her as Justin’s daughter.
Springfield officers seized the Curtrights’ phones, which held video and images of the victim’s online sexual exploitation, as well as images of the victim being abused during the drive to Missouri.
Investigators later obtained the Discord chat logs, which revealed how the Curtrights doggedly groomed and manipulated the victim.
The chat logs also showed that Justin was actively seeking and sexually exploiting other children online.
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Chris Graham
