Child porn on a stick left at park

A 25-year-old Oak Harbor man who works with youth on the Navy base was caught with child pornography after he apparently dropped a memory stick at Fort Nugent Park, court records state.

Prosecutors charged Anthony Harrold, an active duty member of the Navy, in Island County Superior Court May 21 with possessing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct. He could face over a year in prison if convicted of the charge.

Detective Carl Seim with the Oak Harbor Police Department investigated the case. He wrote in his report that a man found a flash drive memory stick on the ground at Fort Nugent Park May 12. The man viewed the memory stick on his work computer and found child pornography, so he reported it to police.

Detective Ed Wallace with the Island County Sheriff’s Office analyzed the device and found that it contained two movie files showing men having sexual contact with pre-teen girls. The girls are identified in the file names as an 11-year-old child named Hana and a 9-year-old child named Jenny.

In addition, Wallace found a state voter registration application that was filled out with Harrold’s name as well as a scanned image of his Navy ID card, the report states.

Seim executed a search warrant at Harrold’s home. In an interview at his home, Harrold admitted having child pornography that he got off the Internet and that “sometimes he would view it everyday for a week and then not view it for a couple of months,” Seim wrote.

Harrold said the detective would likely find more kiddy porn movies and photos on his laptop computer, court documents show.

“Harrold said he likes to look at child pornography, but he doesn’t view girls in real person the same way,” the report states.

Nevertheless, Harrold admitted that he had sex with a high school girl a couple of years ago, the report states. He said the girl told him she was 18 years old, but her friends later told him she was 16.

Harrold was also a volunteer with a program called Drug Education for Youth, or DEFY, at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station. In the program, he comes in contact with children similar in age to some of the children in the pornography he viewed, the report indicates.

During a telephonic hearing May 16, Island County Superior Court Judge Vickie Churchill set conditions of Harrold’s pretrial release. She ruled that he must remove himself from the military DEFY program, stay away from parks where children are present and not have contact with children under 18 years old.

You can reach News-Times reporter Jessie Stensland at jstensland@whidbeynewstimes.com or call 675-6611.

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