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Carbon man given state prison term for possessing child pornography

Published August 02. 2019 12:34PM

A Carbon County man was sentenced to a state prison term Thursday morning on one count sexual abuse of children and nine counts of child pornography. He previously pleaded to the charges.

Stanley Bernardo, 67, of Albrightsville, will spend 24 to 120 months in a state correctional institution on the charges, Judge Steven R. Serfass ruled.

Bernardo was charged by agents of the state Attorney General’s office following an investigation.

According to the affidavit of probable cause filed by Daniel Block, a special agent with the Bureau of Criminal Investigations:

On May 8, 2018, an online investigation for offenders sharing child pornography was being conducted on the Gnutella network, a peer-to-peer network used to exchange files between computers. The IP provider identified the subscriber’s address as being registered to Bernardo.

It was determined that the address was out of the detective’s jurisdiction and the case was forwarded to Block.

A search warrant was then executed at Bernardo’s home. No one was home at the time but a search of the home revealed an all-in-one computer in the office, which police viewed.

Bernardo was contacted and agreed to be interviewed.

Among other things Bernardo said that he has been looking for, downloading and viewing child pornography once or twice a week for the past several years, and that he had seen it as recently as Aug. 28, 2018.

Bernardo said that he has used the file sharing program called Shareaza and that he used it to look for child pornography in May of 2018 and possibly more recently.

Bernardo said that it is a “curiosity thing, because it piqued his curiosity.”

The files found by investigators included at least nine videos of apparent child pornography depicting indecent contact and at least 25 images of apparent child pornography also depicting indecent contact.

Defense attorney Paul J. Levy, of the public defender’s office, said Bernardo took full responsibility for has actions when first confronted by police. He also noted that Bernardo has serious health issues.

Levy noted an assessment by the state sexual offenders board found that Bernardo was not a violent sexual predator.

Bernardo told Serfass, “I would like to apologize for what I did.”

Deputy Attorney General Angela Lynn Raver, who prosecuted the case, said Bernardo’s age and health issues were taken into consideration in reaching a plea bargain. She said actions of Bernardo in using such websites “creates a market for these types of videos.”

Serfass said, “These types of crimes as not victimless.” He said repeatedly viewing such videos harms the children in them each time they are viewed.

In addition to the prison term Serfass ordered Bernardo must submit to a sexual offenders evaluation, follow all provisions of Megan’s Law, cannot have any unsupervised use of a computer, no unsupervised contact with minor children, get a mental health evaluation, pay court costs of about $1,000 and submit a DNA sample.

Bernardo, who has been in prison since his arrest, was given credit for 318 days already served.

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