Man admits sharing child porn from mom’s home

NORRISTOWN » A New Jersey man is in jail after admitting to disseminating child pornography while using the Internet at his mother’s Montgomery County home.

Eric David MacAfee, 42, of the 300 block of Webster Street, Seaside Heights, N.J., pleaded guilty in Montgomery County Court to a felony charge of sexual abuse of children dissemination of child pornography in connection with incidents that occurred in July 2017.

Judge Wendy G. Rothstein remanded MacAfee to the county jail without bail to await his sentencing hearing later this year.

MacAfee faces a possible maximum sentence of five to 10 years in prison on the charge. However, state sentencing guidelines could allow for a lesser sentence.

The judge also ordered MacAfee to undergo drug, alcohol and psychosexual risk assessment evaluations before sentencing. The judge will use those evaluations to assist her in fashioning MacAfee’s sentence.

Regardless of his eventual sentence, MacAfee faces a 25year requirement to report his address to state police as a result of the conviction.

An investigation of MacAfee began in July 2017 when Abington Detective Rick Beaghley, who was conducting an electronic communications investigation on the Internet to identify those possessing and sharing child pornography, located a computer that was sharing files of suspected child pornography from an Abington residence.

When Beaghley connected directly to the host computer, he electronically downloaded five sexually explicit video files depicting children under the age of 18 engaged in sexual acts and poses, according to the criminal complaint. The investigation traced the computer to MacAfee’s mother’s home in the Huntingdon Valley section of Abington, court documents indicate.

Armed with a search warrant detectives went to the Huntingdon Pike residence and were told by MacAfee’s mother that he was no longer at the residence.

“She informed me that Eric was no longer at the residence and was in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. (She) stated that Eric possessed a laptop computer and used the Internet service while at the residence,” Beaghley wrote in the arrest affidavit.

With the assistance of prosecutors from Ocean County, N.J., authorities located MacAfee and found him possessing a laptop computer that contained child porn, according to the criminal complaint.