Daniel Kellan Mayfield, a former youth pastor in South Carolina who pleaded guilty to possession of illegal child sex abuse images last December, was sentenced to a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison for his crime on Tuesday.
Mayfield, 37, took thousands of pornographic images of women and sexual abuse images of children, some younger than 12 years old, as they used the restroom, changed clothes and showered, according to WYFF4.
Al Phillips, a grandfather of some of the victims, felt justice was served because Mayfield stole their “innocence.” “It’s had a tremendous impact on my grandchildren, who were victimized by this predator. And so, it’s, you know, it’s the kind of thing that steals the innocence from a child, and that wrecks their trust,” he told the news outlet.
“I’m a Christian. I forgive. I also understand that even with forgiveness, there are often consequences for our sin,” he added. “I do stand very strong in my faith, and I honestly don’t wish harm on anyone. However, I do believe in the justice system and seeing his sentence through. I believe the consequence does need to happen.”
Mayfield, who has already served two years of his 20-year sentence, will have to register as a sex offender when he is released.
The former youth pastor, who also worked as a wedding photographer and was married, was first arrested in June 2023 on voyeurism charges while he was serving as a youth pastor at First Baptist Gowensville in Landrum. He allegedly filmed girls as young as 14 in the bathroom of the church and recorded women in bridal parties changing their clothes.
In December, he pleaded guilty to one count of possession of illegal child sexual abuse images. Court records, cited by The Post and Courier Greenville, showed that Mayfield pleaded guilty to possession of the illegal images even as he continued to face at least 167 charges related to voyeurism.
Among the charges Mayfield faces, six are for sexual exploitation of a minor in the first degree, while others are connected to three weddings that occurred in 2019 and 2021. At two of the weddings where Mayfield was hired to provide videography services, he allegedly recorded women in areas where they had a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Mayfield allegedly set up cameras in areas where the bridal party changed their clothes.
Of the charges leveled against Mayfield, the Post and Courier reported 109 in Greenville County, 38 in Spartanburg County, nine in Greenwood County, six in Charleston County and five in Beaufort County.
At the end of their investigation of Mayfield in October 2024, the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office made an appeal on Facebook for any additional victims to come forward.
The investigation into Mayfield was sparked by an earlier announcement by investigators that he was caught recording a woman outside the bathroom window of her mother’s house in Greenwood on May 27, 2023. The woman reported that she and her sister found Mayfield standing alone in their backyard after she noticed a light outside the window.
When they initially confronted him about what he was doing, he denied making any recording. Eventually, he confessed to recording the woman while she was showering and gave her his phone so she could view the video. A redacted affidavit details how, after he was caught, Mayfield declared, “Oh s—” before he managed to end the recording.
Carly Hall, Mayfield’s former sister-in-law, who was at his sentencing, said she was the first person to call 911 on him after catching him taking videos of her in the shower in May 2023.
“I thought I was just going to get my video off and delete it wherever it was on the phone, cloud, Google Drive, anything. So, I searched pretty much throughout the whole phone, but it didn’t take long to see the next thing,” Hall told WYFF4.
She said she found hundreds of images of dozens of women, children and even her 2-month-old baby.
“He did have cameras in several houses that I was in. He would plant cameras there, but then also just his regular cellphone. He would have it out any time that I was in his presence. It was always on film,” she said.
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