HAMILTON — A Stevensville man who was discharged from the military and later imprisoned for sex crimes against young girls has been sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting a girl and soliciting a 13-year-old girl via text.
District Judge Jeffrey Langton sentenced Chadwick Tree to two life terms during a Nov. 18 sentencing hearing. Tree, 38, will not be eligible for parole until he turns 98, the Ravalli Republic reported.
He was arrested in January after the mother of a 13-year-old Ravalli County girl said she saw some sexually charged texts from Tree to her daughter. The mother posed as the girl in subsequent texts, prosecutors said. Tree asked for a racy photo of the girl, the mother sent something she found online and then received an obscene photo of Tree, court records said. The woman called police.
While Tree was free on a $250,000 bond on those charges, he was arrested in Missoula for failing to register as a sex offender. Missoula police said Tree’s laptop was logged on to a site called “Younger Girls for Older Men,” charging documents said.
A U.S. Army special agent testified during the sentencing hearing that he had investigated Tree while he was deployed in Iraq and Kuwait and that Tree’s computer showed he was enticing a 12-year-old girl to have sex with him when he returned. Tree also confessed to having sex with a 15-year-old girl while stationed at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, the agent testified.
Tree was discharged from the military and moved to Michigan, where he was caught in an undercover sting that involved a detective posting as a 14-year-old girl online. He served a year and a half in prison.
In Ravalli County, Tree pleaded guilty to soliciting a 13-year-old girl online; sexually assaulting another girl over a two-year period, starting when she was 11; and sending obscene photos of himself to minors.
County Attorney Bill Fulbright said the only way to protect young girls was a lengthy prison sentence, and the judge agreed.
“I am not going to gamble any other innocent lives,” Langton said.
Tree is now jailed in Missoula, where he faces a charge of failing to register as a sex offender.