Man faces jail for possessing child porn
NORRISTOWN » An Abington Township man has jail time in his future after he admitted to possessing child pornography on a computer device at his home.
Russell Marc Gellman, 44, of the 1000 block of Penn Avenue, in the Glenside section of the township, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to three to 23 months in the county jail after he pleaded guilty to charges of possessing child pornography and criminal use of a communication facility in connection with a February 2016 incident at his home.
Judge Todd D. Eisenberg ordered Gellman to report to the county jail on July 15 to begin serving the sentence. Gellman will be eligible for the jail’s work release program during his incarceration.
Eisenberg also ordered Gellman to complete five years’ probation after he’s paroled, meaning Gellman will be under court supervision for about seven years. Gellman will be under the supervision of probation officers from the sex offender unit.
The judge said Gellman is to have no unsupervised contact with minors other than his own child and he is prohibited from having Internet access unless approved by county probation officials.
An investigation of Gellman began in February 2016 when the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a report from Google Inc. in regards to a child pornographic image that was uploaded to an email account on Feb. 24.
The image depicted a female child, approximately 10 years old, having sexual intercourse with an unidentified adult male, according to the criminal complaint filed by Abington Detective Rick Beaghley.
“The investigation traced the email address to Gellman’s home in the Glenside section of Abington Township,” Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney Edward F. McCann Jr. wrote in a news release at the time of Gellman’s arrest, adding Abington detectives conducted a search of Gellman’s home on May 26 and seized an Apple iPad device.
Gellman, according to the arrest affidavit, agreed to be interviewed by detectives regarding two images on an email account linked to him.
“Gellman stated the images were of a young girl naked and one girl perhaps naked and having sex,” Beaghley alleged in the arrest affidavit. “Gellman admitted that the girls were probably under the age of 12 years old and definitely under the age of 18 years old.”
Gellman allegedly admitted that he intentionally uploaded the images.