Man convicted of molesting children receives 35 years

Friday, July 30, 2004 | 9:16 a.m.

District Judge Donald Mosley sentenced a man to 35 years to life in prison on Thursday for molesting four children in his mobile home and videotaping the encounters.

David William Ashman, 56, originally had been charged with 107 counts, but prosecutors dropped most of those counts in exchange for Ashman pleading guilty to two counts of sexual assault with a child under the age of 14, two counts of lewdness with a child under the age of 14 and one count of use of a minor in the production of pornography.

Deputy District Attorney James Sweeten said Ashman never expressed any remorse for his actions. Sweeten said Ashman even told the Department of Parole and Probation in his pre-sentencing interview the victims were "probably getting rich from the videos they were involved with."

In court, however, Ashman said he never made such statements and apologized and asked for forgiveness for his actions.

The charges are based on 13 videotaped incidents with four children ranging in age from 8 to 15.

As part of the plea agreement, Ashman will also plead guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of receipt of child pornography. For that plea he will serve a five-year prison sentence to run concurrently with the sentence for the charges he pleaded to before Mosley.

Ashman was arrested in mid-March after a Metro Police informant brought in a videotape showing Ashman molesting a girl, police said.

Authorities allege Ashman repeatedly molested three girls in the past five years at his home in Henderson.

An unidentified boy under the age of 14 was also a victim, according to the indictment.