A former detective with the Madison County Sheriff’s Office, who was most recently assigned to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, pleaded guilty today in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia in Charlottesville to multiple charges of sexually exploiting minors. Acting Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Blanco of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and Acting U.S. Attorney Rick A. Mountcastle for the Western District of Virginia made the announcement.

Bruce Arlie Harvey, 41, of Reva, Va., pleaded guilty to three counts of transporting a minor across state lines with the intent to engage in criminal sexual acts, three counts of interstate travel with minors with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and one count of possession of child pornography.

According to the information presented during the guilty plea hearing, Harvey, while a karate instructor at the Virginia Tong Leong School of Karate in Madison, began making sexual advances toward the two minor female victims in this case while they were students at the karate school. Harvey engaged in illegal sexual acts with these children after he began giving them private karate lessons and began traveling with each of them to karate competitions and other events at various out-of-state locations, including Ocean City, Md. This conduct took place between 1998 and 2007.

At the time of his arrest on May 3, investigators recovered a Sony microcassette in a bedroom closet that contained a film clip dated Feb. 14, 2007, that showed one of the victims performing a sexual act with Harvey in his Madison County home.

The FBI and the Virginia State Police investigated this case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy S. Healey and Trial Attorney Lauren S. Kupersmith of the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division are prosecuting this case.