GRAND RAPIDS (WWJ) – A Southern Michigan man will spend the next 50 years in prison for sexually exploiting young girls over the course of a decade and a half.
Tye Stiger of Jonesville – near Hillsdale – was sentenced Tuesday for sexually exploiting four girls between about 2007 and 2022, U.S. Attorney Mark Totten announced. After his release from prison, Stiger will be ordered to spend 10 years on supervised release.
Stiger, 35, was caught with child pornography in 2022 and he fled the country to the Philippines. He was arrested later that year and extradited back to the U.S.
In February 2022, according to Totten’s office, two women reported that Stiger had groomed and molested them for years. After they came forward, police executed a search warrant at Stiger’s home, seizing his cell phones and computers.
Investigators found “voluminous child pornography” on the devices. Authorities say there was a series of videos from between 2007 and 2009, in which Stiger set up a hidden video camera in a bathroom to record young girls changing their clothes.
There were also nude pictures of young girls that Stiger took in 2022, officials said. The ages of the victims were not released.
After the search, Stiger flew to Asia with no return trip scheduled. Investigators eventually found and arrested him in the Philippines in August 2022, where he had been working at a children’s ministry.
“The sexual exploitation of our children will not be tolerated by my office,” Totten said, per a press release. “While we can never erase the trauma these young girls experienced at the hands of Mr. Stiger, today’s sentence shows that we are committed to protecting our most vulnerable and holding offenders accountable.”
The case – investigated by the Michigan State Police, U.S. Marshals Service, and Homeland Security Investigations – was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from online exploitation and abuse.
Anyone with information or concerns about possible child exploitation should contact local law enforcement officials.
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