Crime & Safety

Essex Man Gets 5 Years in Child Porn Case

Timothy Whitaker, 46, of Essex, admitted to having more than 8,500 images of child pornography on his computer.

An Essex man was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison was sentenced Wednesday to five years in federal prison for possessing, distributing and receiving thousands of images and videos of child pornography, according to a news release from Maryland's U.S. Attorney.

Timothy Whitaker, 46, is also required to have supervised release for life and must register as a sex offender after completing his sentence, according to the terms of his punishment issued by U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz.

Following , Whitaker admitted that he was a member of a publicly available file sharing program, and had multiple images and videos of child pornography available for other members of the program to download via the Internet. 

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On June 2, 2010, a Baltimore County Police detective logged onto the program and downloaded a video depicting the sexual abuse of a prepubescent girl. 

On June 21, Baltimore County Police officers executed a search warrant at Whitaker’s residence and seized two desktop computers, two laptop computers, several hard drives, binders containing hard copies of child pornography and multiple pieces of removable media, according to the release.

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This case was brought as part of , a nationwide initiative lanuched in 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat exploitation and abuse of children.


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