In pleading guilty to a federal misdemeanor charge, Ken Hillman admitted that he allowed the woman and her now-former husband to participate in undercover child sex sting operations.
Hillman ran a joint local-federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in northwest Georgia.
He told a federal judge Friday he accepted that he had violated FBI policy, but said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because of the disturbing images he saw daily.
"It seemed the chatrooms I would go into would routinely become worse and worse and worse," he said.
Hillman pleaded guilty in July to a single charge contained in an “accusation” that federal prosecutors secured just weeks before time would have run out on bringing criminal charges against the veteran agent.
Court documents show that Hillman allowed Angela Russell, with whom he had a sexual relationship, to help lure some would-be child predators online even though she was not in law enforcement. Russell was granted immunity.
The task force Hillman ran has since been disbanded.
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