A 29-year-old Lehigh Valley man has been arrested and charged, officials said, after he allegedly possessed and shared videos that depicted child sexual abuse on the internet.<\/p>\n
Officials said, Matthew Francis, 29, of Allentown, was charged Friday with felony counts of possession of child sexual abuse material and related offenses after a investigation that began earlier this month.<\/p>\n
According to police, on Sept. 4, 2026, officials received tips that several videos depicting child sexual abuse had been uploaded from a computer that was believed to be located at a home along the unit block of North 7th Street in Allentown. <\/p>\n
Officials said investigators found a cell phone number tied to those images had been previously provided to police in Allentown by Francis when he made a police report in June of this year following a dispute with a neighbor. <\/p>\n
A search of Francis’ home was conducted on Friday, police said, and investigators allege they found additional child sexual material on his cell phone at that time. <\/p>\n
Francis has been arrested and was being held in police custody as he awaits an arraignment hearing, officials said. <\/p>\n
His next court appearance is scheduled for Sept. 18, 2026. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 29-year-old Lehigh Valley man has been arrested and charged, officials said, after he allegedly possessed and shared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,157],"class_list":["post-283958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-lehigh-valley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283958","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=283958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}