Ex-officer sentenced on child sex charge

A former assistant chief probation officer for Lynn District Court was sentenced Friday to 17 years in federal prison after he was convicted in April of sexually exploiting a child for trading explicit photos and videos with a 13-year-old girl, officials said. Brian Orlandella, 49, of Beverly, was also given five years’ supervised release and ordered to pay a $5,000 special assessment to the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act during his sentencing in US District Court in Boston, the US attorney’s office said in a statement. He was convicted following a six-day trial for charges of sexual exploitation of a child and transfer of obscene material to a minor, according to the statement. Orlandella’s attorney declined to comment on the case. A Texas mother contacted local police in 2018, saying she found messages on her 13-year-old daughter’s cellphone between the child and a man later identified as Orlandella, prosecutors said. The messages included photos of Orlandella masturbating and instructions for the 13-year-old to send him explicit videos and photos of herself, according to the statement. The child claimed to be one year older than she was, and Orlandella acknowledged that he was much older than her, prosecutors said. The messages were traced to Orlandella’s home, where investigators found two cellphones belonging to him, one of which held evidence that tied Orlandella to an account “used to procure sexually explicit imagery from the underage victim,” according to the statement. Orlandella admitted to investigators he was the man seen in the explicit videos found on the 13-yearold’s phone, prosecutors said.