TONTITOWN (AR)
Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette (nwaonline.com)[Fayetteville AR]
April 28, 2026
By Ron Wood
An employee at a Tontitown church who was arrested last year for having images and videos showing child sexual abuse on his personal cellphone and a work computer has been sentenced to more than six years in federal prison.
Paul Scouten, 40, of East Cortland Street in Fayetteville, was arrested by Arkansas State Police in April 2025 for distributing, possessing or viewing material depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child.
Scouten was indicted by a federal grand jury May 21. He pleaded guilty Oct. 6 and was sentenced in federal court Thursday to six years and two months in prison to be followed by 15 years supervised release. He was ordered to pay $19,000 in restitution.
The investigation into Scouten began after Google flagged 92 images and videos of child sexual abuse uploaded to its platform on Aug. 13, 2024, according to a criminal complaint filed in the case. Of those, 18 were verified sexually explicit images or videos of children while 73 were sexually explicit images or videos of children created using generative artificial intelligence, the complaint states.
The images and videos depicted children between the ages of 3 and 14 years old, according to the complaint.
Scouten had been office manager at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Tontitown since August 2016, according to a statement sent to parishioners from the Catholic Diocese of Little Rock after Scouten’s arrest.
After Scouten’s arrest, investigators served a search warrant at the parish office and took his work computer to determine whether it also contained child pornography, according to the diocese. Police determined it did, the diocese reported.
Church officials said there is no indication any children at the parish or Ozark Catholic Academy — a four-year private high school that operates adjacent to the church — had been involved.