Border Patrol Agent Dana Ray Thornhill Sexually Abused Children for Years. They Were 8 When It Started.

 

Border Patrol Agent Dana Ray Thornhill Sexually Abused Children for Years. They Were 8 When It Started.

Dana Ray Thornhill was a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Arizona.

Investigators eventually uncovered years of sexual abuse involving multiple children.

Authorities said Thornhill continuously abused two children over several years, beginning when they were just 8 years old. Investigators also connected him to the transmission of child sexual abuse material through an encrypted messaging app.

Then police came to arrest him.

Thornhill armed himself with a semiautomatic pistol, barricaded himself inside a lighthouse at a Christian fellowship church, and refused to surrender.

The standoff lasted four hours.

In 2020, Thornhill pleaded guilty to four counts of child sexual abuse.

He was sentenced to the maximum:

40 years in prison.

The judge also ruled that he could not receive early-release credits and ordered him to register as a Level 3 sex offender after his sentence.

The forty years matters.

But so does the number eight.

They were eight fucking years old when the abuse began. And it continued for years.