Ottawa Hills teen guilty in porn case

12/18/2001

A 17-year-old Ottawa Hills youth was found to be delinquent yesterday in Lucas County Juvenile Court for possessing thousands of pornographic images on a computer hard drive.

Magistrate John Yerman fined the boy $225 for the first-degree misdemeanor and ordered him to attend a sexual offender treatment program after he admitted to disseminating matter harmful to juveniles.

“It was assorted pornography,” said Denise Cubbon, Juvenile Court prosecutor. “There were thousands of images.”

The images were discovered in a computer in the teen's house after a father of a 16-year-old Ottawa Hills student found a disc in his son's room on Feb. 23. The boy said he bought the disc at school for $7, police said.

The father, who destroyed the disc, notified Ottawa Hills police several days later, which triggered a search of the 17-year-old's room.

Ms. Cubbon said it's not certain how widely the materials were distributed or whether they were sold. She said there was not enough evidence to support a charge that the pornography was being sold.

In addition to the pornographic material on the computer, police discovered a marijuana pipe in the boy's room. In a separate instance, the boy was found in possession of marijuana. Yesterday, he was found delinquent on the charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of marijuana.

If he has no court contact within the next six months, those delinquencies could be dismissed.

“We have a man on the verge of adulthood who is wandering aimlessly,” the magistrate said. “You have to change your life - you know that.”