A Jackson Township resident has been charged after a compact disc which police said contained images of child pornography was found at his former residence in the Spring Valley Shelter in Valparaiso, the Porter County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said.

Michael T. McGinley, 38, of 975N 250E, has been charged with five counts of child exploitation, a Class C felony punishable by a term of two to eight years; and five counts of possession of child pornography, a Class D felony punishable by a term of six months to three years.

According to the probable cause affidavit filed by Det. Lt. John Ross of the Valparaiso Police Department, on June 26 an employee of Spring Valley Shelter was cleaning an apartment recently vacated by McGinley and found a CD. On viewing the CD, Ross stated, the employee observed child-pornography images.

Ross subsequently made contact with McGinley on July 24 and in an interview, Ross stated, McGinley confirmed that the CD was his but advised that someone had sent the images to him and he had been unable to delete them.

After further questioning, however, McGinley authorized Ross to search his computers and several discs, Ross stated. McGinley also advised Ross that the hard drive of his computer contained “upwards of 5,000 images of child pornography that he has received and downloaded,” Ross stated.

“Furthermore, Mr. McGinley admitted to managing the images by placing them into particular folder files and titling them with names particular to the images contained in the file folder,” Ross stated. “He further admitted to disseminating the images across the Internet and provided me with various e-mail and Internet accounts and their respective passwords.”

Ross added in his affidavit that he viewed the CD found at Spring Valley Shelter and confirmed that it contains images of sexual conduct by children “who are clearly under 18 years of age.”

McGinley was being held at Porter County Jail.

Child exploitation is defined as knowingly or intentionally managing, producing, sponsoring, presenting, exhibiting, photographing, filming, videotaping, or creating a digitized image of any performance which includes sexual conduct by a child under the age of 18.

Possession of child pornography is defined as being in possession of an image which depicts or describes sexual conduct by a child under the age of 16.

Posted 8/4/2008