A 51-year-old Scranton man was sentenced to 15 to 30 years behind bars for attempting to access child sexual abuse material using public computers at the Scranton Public Library, Lackawanna County District Attorney Brian Gallagher announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n
John Dudkiewicz, of downtown Scranton, is also a designated sexually violent predator and will be required to register as a sex offender for life under Pennsylvania\u2019s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.<\/p>\n
Charged in May, he pleaded guilty to 40 felony counts of possession of child sexual abuse material in July.<\/p>\n
The investigation began when library staff reported Dudkiewicz used a public computer to search for and view sexually explicit images and videos involving young children. Staff reviewed the computer\u2019s search history and documented more than 40 searches during the time he was at the library.<\/p>\n
Library records and surveillance footage helped identify him as the person using the computer.<\/p>\n
In addition, Dudkiewicz was under federal supervision at the time for a prior offense related to child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n
According to the criminal complaint, Dudkiewicz admitted to officers that he had conducted the searches and viewed images of children at the library. He also told officers he had been trying to contact children online and was on federal probation for similar conduct.<\/p>\n
When officers stopped him, he said he had been heading back to the library to view additional images.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank the Scranton Public Library and its employees for recognizing this disturbing conduct, preserving critical evidence and immediately contacting law enforcement,\u201d Gallagher said. \u201cOur highest priority is working every day to eradicate the possession, use and dissemination of child pornography and to identify, investigate and prosecute pedophiles in our community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you prey upon children, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law and hold you accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 51-year-old Scranton man was sentenced to 15 to 30 years behind bars for attempting to access child…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312917,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[46,202,201,182,139,28,178,180,179],"class_list":["post-312916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-courts","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\/312916","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=312916"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312916\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}