A 48-year-old Jefferson Twp. man faces charges after investigators discovered photos and a video containing child sexual abuse material on his phone, police said.<\/p>\n
An investigation began in May after Kimberly Ragona informed Danielle Taylor, an employee of the Lackawanna County Office of Youth and Family Services, about photos of suspected child sexual abuse material she found on Theodore Belk\u2019s phone, according to a criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
During a meeting May 19 Ragona told Taylor she found the pictures on Belk\u2019s phone a few years ago and took pictures of the images with her own device, police said.<\/p>\n
Walter Koza, a criminal investigator with the Pennsylvania State Police, spoke with Ragona, who advised the trooper she has been living with Belk \u2014 her boyfriend \u2014 for three years, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
When Ragona confronted Belk about the photos, he denied responsibility for having the images on his phone and blamed his friends, investigators said. Then, Belk damaged his phone and the screen stopped working, police said.<\/p>\n
On May 29, Koza obtained a search warrant for Belk\u2019s phone, which underwent forensic examination at the Northeast BCI Computer Crimes Unit, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
On Nov. 21, Koza discovered 38 images of suspected child sexual abuse material on Belk\u2019s phone and searches in Belk\u2019s web history regarding 13-year-old girls, investigators said.<\/p>\n
The same day, Koza provided Cheryl Friedman of the Children\u2019s Advocacy Center in Scranton with a CD containing the images from Belk\u2019s phone, police said.<\/p>\n
Ten days later, Friedman notified Koza that there were several real images of child sexual abuse material and several artificial intelligence images of child sexual abuse material on the phone, according to the criminal complaint.<\/p>\n
Following further investigation by Koza, Lackawanna County Detective Sheryl Turner and Lackawanna County Deputy District Attorney Bo Loughney, nine photos were determined to be real images of child sexual abuse material, and one photo was determined to be a real image depicting a child having sexual intercourse with a male, police said.<\/p>\n
Police charged Belk, 4554 Hamlin Hwy., with 10 felony counts of sexual abuse of children\u2013child sexual abuse material.<\/p>\n
As of Sunday, Belk remained in Lackawanna County Prison in lieu of $150,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Dec. 16 at 10:45 a.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 48-year-old Jefferson Twp. man faces charges after investigators discovered photos and a video containing child sexual abuse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[202,201,182,7376,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-58858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","9":"tag-lackawanna-county","10":"tag-local-news","11":"tag-moscow","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-pennsylvania","14":"tag-scranton","15":"tag-scranton-headlines","16":"tag-scranton-news","17":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58858","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=58858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}