CLEARFIELD – A Winburne man will be spending time in state prison for possessing child pornography.
During sentencing court on Monday, Dennis Allen Nearhood, 66, pleaded guilty to five felony counts of sexual abuse of child-child pornography as well as felony criminal use of communication facility.
Judge Paul E. Cherry sentenced him to serve 24 months to five years in state prison with two years concurrent probation.
He was ordered to complete sex offender counseling and not have any unsupervised contact with anyone under 18 years old. Although after an evaluation he was not classified as a sexually-violent predator, he will still need to register with law enforcement under Megan’s Law.
According to the affidavit of probable cause, the investigation began in September 2023 after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported 11 suspected images of child pornography uploaded on BingImage.
The images were uploaded beginning in February 2023 and ended Oct. 25, 2023. Officials tracked the source to an Internet service belonging to Nearhood.
On Feb. 22, a search warrant was executed on Nearhood’s residence. While it was being searched, Nearhood agreed to speak with investigators. He “readily admitted that he had viewed child pornography,” it says in the affidavit.
After being read his rights, he continued speaking about the case.
He stated that he regularly-viewed child porn but denied saving it, saying he deleted it regularly so as to not slow down his computer.
He admitted he viewed images of children as young as two years old and estimated he did so about twice per week.
He claimed he did not seek it out, but it “would simply pop up as he was viewing adult pornography.”
Twenty files of child pornography were found on Nearhood’s computer.
