Law enforcement officers charged a Clarks Summit man with felony offenses related to possession of child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Samuel Johnson, 32, of 514 Highland Ave., allegedly used online platforms, including Snapchat, to upload and distribute files depicting sexual abuse of minors.<\/p>\n
He remains at Lackawanna County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bail.<\/p>\n
Investigators identified numerous files, including images and videos involving prepubescent children, as well as communications suggesting Johnson\u2019s participation in online groups centered on the exploitation of minors.<\/p>\n
Further investigation determined that Johnson used a cellphone to access, store and disseminate this material. A forensic examination of the phone uncovered dozens of files depicting child sexual abuse, according to a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Johnson was already subject to registration requirements pursuant to the Pennsylvania Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act, aggravating the seriousness of the conduct alleged in the case.<\/p>\n
Based on the use of unregistered internet identifiers, Johnson is also charged with five felony counts of failure to register with the Pennsylvania State Police.<\/p>\n
\u201cClearly this defendant, who is sexually attracted to children, cannot control himself,\u201d Lackawanna County District Attorney Brian Gallagher said. \u201cHaving already faced criminal prosecution in 2022, Johnson now faces a 25-year mandatory minimum sentence which we will not back down from.\u201d<\/p>\n
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. on April 14 before District Judge Alyce Farrell.<\/p>\n
The investigation remains ongoing. Anyone with additional information is encouraged to contact the district attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Law enforcement officers charged a Clarks Summit man with felony offenses related to possession of child sexual abuse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1993,202,201,182,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-147435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-clarks-summit","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-lackawanna-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147435"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147435\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}