A California man is behind bars for promoting and possessing child pornography.
According to a March 9 article by KRCG-TV, Bryan Donley, 44, of California, was arrested March 8 by the Missouri Highway Patrol and charged with two counts of first-degree promoting child pornography and three counts of possessing child pornography. Donley was being held at the Moniteau County Jail before being released on 10 percent cash or surety of a $500,000 bond with the condition that he must not associate with any children or possess any device capable of connecting to the internet or displaying images.
The article said the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) informed the highway patrol of the incident after Microsoft detected two files of suspected child pornography were uploaded from an IP address belonging to Co-Mo Connect, an internet service provider, who later determined the address belonged to Donley. An IP address is a unique numeric address given to a computer or device connected to the internet. A probable cause statement obtained by the Democrat said Donley supposedly uploaded illegal images of children between 8-12 years old to Microsoft's Bing search engine.
The highway patrol, with the assistance of California Police Department and the Moniteau County Sheriff's Office, executed a search of Donley's residence on March 8, where they seized several devices belonging to him. The probable cause statement said Donley admitted to observing indecent photos of children online, and he further described how he used Bing to locate other pornographic images. The statement also said video files displaying indecent footage of children between 8-14 years old were discovered on a computer in Donley's bedroom. Other devices seized from the residence will undergo additional forensic examination.
According to court records, Donley is due to appear for a case review on May 23.