Chris Hamburg was sentenced by Senior U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill to the maximum sentence of 240 months, or 20 years, in federal prison for transporting a child across state lines with the intent to sexually abuse the child, U.S. Attorney Josh Hurwit announced on Wednesday.
Hamburg was also sentenced to three years of supervised release.
Hamburg was indicted in July 2022 for one count of transportation of a minor. A superseding indictment was filed in December 2022, charging Hamburg with two more counts of transportation of a minor.
In February 2023, a second superseding indictment was filed, charging Hamburg with an additional count of transporting a minor, adding up to four total charges.
Hamburg signed a plea agreement in July 2023, stating he would plead guilty to two counts of transportation of a minor, in exchange for the prosecution dropping the other two counts and recommending no more than 180 months in prison with three years of supervised release at sentencing.
During sentencing, Winmill said, “I would have a hard time coming up with a case that is more horrific than this one.”
According to a news release from Hurwit, the victim in the case gave a statement, saying her life has been forever changed because of Hamburg’s actions.
Background of the case
According to court records, around 1990, Hamburg began dating the victim’s mother.
Hamburg moved into the family’s Washington residence and began sexually abusing the victim. She was approximately eight or nine years old when the abuse began.
Hamburg impregnated the victim when she was 11 years old. After she gave birth to a son, Hamburg moved the family to Idaho to avoid contact with child protective services.
Hamburg continued to sexually abuse the victim and he impregnated her for a second time. When the victim was 13 years old, she gave birth to a second son.
For over a decade, Hamburg moved the family to various cities in Idaho and Utah. He sexually abused the victim until she was in her early twenties.
Paternity testing confirmed Hamburg fathered the victim’s children.
According to an interview done with the victim by The Spokesman-Review, Hamburg did not allow the victim or the children to talk to anyone outside the house.
“We weren’t allowed to talk to neighbors. We weren’t allowed to go to the park,” (the victim) said. “We weren’t allowed to go shopping. We were, literally, held captive in the house.”
Eventually, according to the interview, the victim took her son to the library where they started to watch YouTube videos. The son asked Hamburg for a computer, and he agreed.
“I had to sneak getting a YouTube page,” (the victim) said.
She began commenting on videos, and eventually elaborated about what happening to her and her children. The victim eventually made friends with a man in Illinois, who later became her husband. The couple has since divorced, according to The Spokesman-Review.
The relationship eventually led to the Illinois man sending the victim a phone.
Because of her online presence, she was able to reunite with the extended family that Hamburg had taken her from years earlier, including an older sister that she hadn’t talked to in nearly two decades.
The victim also finally told her mother that Hamburg was the father of her two boys.
Eventually Hamburg seemingly disappeared, and the family moved to Illinois, where they’ve been for the past decade.
The victim soon found Michael Pfau and Vincent Nappo, who have represented victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and leaders in the Boy Scouts of America, who took the case, calling it a tragic example of the social safety net not protecting the victim of sexual crime.
About a year ago, according to the interview, social media alerted the victim to Hamburg’s presence after he disappeared.
At the same time she’d been writing about her experiences online, she learned that Hamburg had been involved in a road rage incident in a town about 30 minutes away from where she lived, which was filmed and posted to the video-sharing app TikTok.
Another incident was reported on local news in Indiana.
In another unlikely coincidence, one of the victim’s online friends was another road rage victim of Hamburg’s, and the two were able to determine it was him from the photos and videos.
That friend turned out to be the daughter of a U.S. attorney, and Nappo urged the victim to pursue federal charges. The victim convinced one of her sons to provide a DNA sample that could be used to identify Hamburg as his father.
The indictment was handed down in July 2022, and in August, the FBI found Hamburg at a motel in Missoula, Montana, where he was arrested.
