Christopher M. Stanford will soon be released from federal prison after doing time for the armed holdup of a Butler County bank in 2011.

But while his sentence will be over in April, he won’t be a free man.

Instead, the 37-year-old Stanford of Portersville is to be taken to the county prison on new charges filed this week that he raped two young children over a five-year-period beginning in 2005.

State police said they only recently learned of the allegations after a 14-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy came forward and accused the defendant.

“The kids reported this about four months ago,” police Sgt. Patrick Sarnese said Thursday.

The children claimed Stanford repeatedly assaulted them at two homes in the county.

The county Children and Youth Services agency interviewed the children separately.

The girl told investigators that Stanford began molesting her when she was 5. The abuse escalated and continued until 2009.

She recounted the years of abuse that, she acknowledged, “kind of haunts me in a way,” according to court documents.

The girl denied that Stanford ever threatened her, police said. But she recalled Stanford telling her “it was a secret (and) not to tell anyone,” a police affidavit said.

The boy related that he was 4 when Stanford began making him do “things in adult sexual ways,” documents said. He said he was in the second grade when the abuse stopped.

At one point, the boy told investigators, Stanford urged him, “Don’t tell anyone about this. I can get in trouble,” documents said.

Police on Tuesday filed their case against Stanford, charging him with 14 felony counts.

He is charged with two counts each of rape, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child, aggravated indecent assault, child endangerment and corruption of minors.

Stanford is an inmate at the Federal Correctional Complex, a low-security facility in Petersburg, Va., stemming from the armed robbery of the First National Bank in Portersville on April 29, 2011.

He pleaded guilty to armed bank robbery in November 2011.

On March 9, 2012, he was sentenced to 41 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release, said Margaret Philbin, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Pittsburgh.

But having earned “good-conduct-time” credit, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons authorities, he is to be released from the facility on April 20.

But before then, Sarnese said, a “hold detainer” is to be filed to make sure Stanford remains there until state police come and get him and take him back to face the rape charges here.