Calais Man Charged in Porn Case
By DIANA GRAETTINGER; OF THE NEWS STAFF
CALAIS – A 23-year-old local man was arrested Friday and charged with dissemination of sexually explicit material.
Bail for Timothy Lawless was set at $10,000 unsecured. Lawless was arrested around 2 p.m. Friday.
He is expected to appear in Washington County Superior Court in July.
Sgt. David Randall of the Calais Police Department said Friday that the Washington County Sheriff’s Department and the Attorney General’s Office assisted in the case.
More charges are possible against Lawless, Randall said.
If convicted, Lawless could be sentenced up to five years.
Randall declined to elaborate on the case except to say the Police Department had received an anonymous tip.
The sergeant said that in the 18 years he has been a police officer this is the first time he has handled a case such as this and that’s why he’d sought help from outside agencies.
“Lt. David Denbow [of the Washington County Sheriff's Department] was excellent,” Randall said.
Denbow has handled similar cases for the county.
Last month, 35-year-old Travis Smith, who had more than 1,200 images of child pornography on his computer, was sentenced in 4th District Court to six months in jail, all suspended, and two years of probation. He had been charged with 19 counts of possession of sexually explicit materials. He also was ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation and to register as a sex offender.
Denbow was the chief investigator in that case.
The investigation into Smith’s home computer took nearly three years for the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force in Augusta to complete.
The computer crimes task force examined the seized material, which contained computer files with visual images of very young children being sexually active, the Smith complaint said. The task force also was able to reproduce part of Smith’s computer hard drive, deleted files and Internet history.
The evidence seized showed that the computer and CDs contained 1,238 images and two sex videos involving children.
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