Hearing continued for ex-Worcester Township supervisor facing child pornography charges
SKIPPACK — Monday’s scheduled preliminary hearing for former Worcester Township supervisor John R. Harris — who was charged last month with more than 60 child pornography-related criminal counts after county detectives said they found on his computer and hard drives hundreds of videos of children engaged in sex acts — was continued after Harris fired his attorney and obtained new counsel, according to personnel at District Judge Albert Augustine’s Skippack court.
Harris, 67, has retained the services of veteran Montgomery County defense lawyer Marc Steinberg, court personnel said, and due to the change, the hearing was delayed to an unspecified future date.
Harris, who resides on the 1100 block of Kriebel Mill Road, was arraigned on Feb. 21 before Augustine on 50 counts of child pornography, eight counts of dissemination of child pornography and eight counts of criminal use of communications facility — all third-degree felonies.
According to an affidavit of probable cause filed in district court, a Montgomery County detective assigned to the Major Crimes Unit and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force identified on Dec. 8 a computer that was sharing child pornography, and after a connection was established with the computer, the detective initiated a download and received a file containing eight videos of children under 18 engaged in sexual acts.
Subsequent investigation determined that the computer’s IP address was owned by Verizon Online, and after delivering a subpoena to Verizon, the company provided a report on Jan. 10 that identified Harris as the subscriber associated with the IP address, the detective said.
On Jan. 15, a search warrant for Harris’ residence was issued by Augustine, and that evening, county detectives — along with
members of the Pennsylvania State Police and other law enforcement officials — executed the warrant and seized a desktop computer, external hard drives and thumb drives from the home, according to the affidavit.
Additionally, authorities said, Harris was interviewed at the scene and provided a written statement in which he admitted to installing software on his computer to search for pornography.
According to the affidavit, a forensic examination of the seized items revealed 12 child pornography videos on the computer, 212 child pornography videos on one external hard drive and 625 child pornography videos on a second hard drive; several of the videos were duplicates, the affidavit states.
Based on those findings, a warrant for Harris’ arrest was issued on Feb. 20.
Harris remains free on $25,000 unsecured bail set by Augustine at the Feb. 21 preliminary arraignment.
Harris served on the Worcester Township Board of Supervisors from 2003 until 2009. Prior to that, he served on the township’s planning commission and as the township’s volunteer open space coordinator.
Beginning in 1979, Harris and his wife ran the Blue Bell Senior Camp — a summer day camp for boys ages 8 to 14 that was founded by Harris’s parents in 1946, according to an interview with Harris published in The Friends of Worcester Spring 2003 newsletter. The Harrises announced in November of 2006 that they were re- tiring from managing the camp.
In a short biography published in the Spring/ Summer 2013 edition of Natural Lands — the magazine of Natural Lands Trust, an eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey land conservation organization that had counted Harris as a member of its Board of Trustees — Harris is described as also having “served on boards for a New Hampshire boys’ camp, Oak Lane Day School, and the Academy of Children’s Music,” and “In 1994, he founded the Pennsylvania Day Camp Association, an organization that supports camp for children with developmental and learning disabilities.”
On Monday, Natural Lands Trust spokesman Oliver Bass provided a statement from the organization that said Harris informed NLT on Feb. 18 that he intended to resign from the Board of Trustees — on which he had served since July of 2012, after NLT merged with Montgomery County Lands Trust, where Harris had been a board member since 2010 — and did so formally two days later, on Feb. 20.
“We had no knowledge of the investigation and have not been contacted by authorities,” the statement reads. “Mr. Harris’s involvement with both Natural Lands Trust and Montgomery County Lands Trust was limited to participation in meetings of the board and board committees. He served in no other capacity and has no current association with the organization.”
Attempts to reach the Worcester Township Board of Supervisors for comment have been unsuccessful.
According to court documents and state records, Harris is the president of Blue Bell Leasing Company, which rents 10-passenger vans to schools and camps.
Follow staff writer Michael Goldberg on Twitter @mg_thereporter.