DANVILLE — A former Rossville youth minister and coach was sentenced to 15 years in prison for abusing a teenage boy.

Judge Claudia Anderson sentenced Andrew L. Thomas, 47, of Rossville, in Vermilion County Circuit Court on Monday.

Thomas pleaded guilty to one count of criminal sexual assault-a position of trust, a Class 1 felony, in April, in exchange for the sentence. He will serve the sentence concurrently with a 30-year sentence in federal prison that he's facing in connection with other sex crimes.

Vermilion County prosecutors said Thomas, while a youth group leader at a Rossville church, committed a sex act with a male victim between the ages of 12 and 18 between Jan. 1, 2010 and Feb. 28, 2010. They said that if the case had gone to trial, the victim would have testified that Thomas assaulted him in the same manner four times.

Before his arrest, Thomas was youth minister at the First Church of Christ in Rossville and track coach at the Rossville-Alvin Elementary School. He was arrested and charged in circuit court in March 2010.

Last September, a federal grand jury indicted Thomas on five counts of sexual exploitation of children. According to the federal indictment, Thomas posed as a female, calling himself "Stephanie," "Kayla," "Jenn" or "Jessica" between January 2007 and March 2010. Then he used social-networking sites, texting on pay-as-you-go phones and email accounts to entice minor-age boys to engage in sexually explicit conduct and to solicit pornographic images of them.

Thomas pleaded guilty to all five counts in U.S. District Court in Urbana in March. Under the terms of the stipulated plea agreement, Thomas agreed to a 30-year sentence.

That sentencing is scheduled for June 24.

Also under the agreement, Thomas will be required to be supervised release for the remainder of his life after he's released from prison and register as a sex offender. He will be designated as a sexual predator.

The local investigation by the Vermilion County sheriff's office led to the federal case, which was investigated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Homeland Security Investigations with assistance from the Decatur Police Department.