A Batavia man is facing Federal charges for allegedly viewing child pornography while using a computer in the Richmond Memorial Library in Batavia.
Robert Roy Richmond is being charged under a Federal statute that prohibits viewing child pornography that has been transmitted across state lines.
According to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court, FBI agent Jennifer Amo opened the investigation after the bureau was notified by Batavia PD in January of an investigation into a computer being used to view child pornography at the library.
The case started when a library employee who was working in the DVD section saw a man at a computer looking at a pornographic picture of a child in fishnet stockings.
As soon as the man left, the employee shut down the computer and put an out-of-order sign on it in order to preserve any potential evidence until police arrived.
Library employees told Amo that Richmond came to the library every morning and used a computer.
Richmond was identified as the suspected computer user because he had to input his library card number to access the system. He was also identified as a suspect by the employee through a photo lineup.
Another library employee told Amo that Richmond may have been coming into the library since 2014 to view adult pornography and had been confronted four or five times by the employee about it.
Upon questioning, Richmond allegedly admitted he's been viewing child pornography since 2009.
The FBI conducted a forensic examination of the computer and the affidavit contains a description of two the images allegedly found on the hard drive. Both are sexually explicit, of girls who are about 6 or 7 years old.
No information has been released yet on the status of the pending legal case.
Why was he not banned from
Why was he not banned from the library?
He was not banned form the
He was not banned form the library, initially, because the material he was viewing, while repulsive to many was not illegal. Once he was caught viewing images that were illegal action was taken.
The first amendment protects any citizens rights to view and consume any media that is not obscene or child pornography. I am not sure exactly where the line is drawn between pornography and obscenity. Seems that would be a matter of opinion.
I'm not defending any of this, just answering a question.
Justice Potter Stewart in a
Justice Potter Stewart in a ruling from 1964: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."