Bridgeport man sentenced for possessing child porn

NORRISTOWN — A Bridgeport man faces six years of court supervision after he admitted to charges he possessed child pornography on his cellphone.

Michael E. VanCamp, 32, who listed an address in the unit block of West Fifth Street, was sentenced in Montgomery County Court to six years’ probation after he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of possessing child pornography in connection with incidents that occurred between March and June 2023.

Judge Risa Vetri Ferman imposed the sentence as part of a plea agreement.

VanCamp also faces a 15-year requirement to report his address to state police in order to comply with Pennsylvania’s Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act, previously known as Megan’s Law.

VanCamp must comply with all recommendations for treatment after undergoing a psychosexual evaluation.

“He’s going to be under supervision for a very long period of time, specifically by a specialized sex offender supervision unit,” said Assistant District Attorney Jediah Grobstein, who handled the case.

Grobstein said prosecutors take possession of child pornography very seriously and that the crime is not a victimless crime.

“Part of what we fight against in the district attorney’s office is the impression that possessing what people call child pornography is a victimless crime and that is simply not the reality,” Grobstein said.

“The reality is that people’s desire for these images and the efforts they will go through to obtain these images creates a market for people to produce them. In order to produce these materials children are violated,” Grobstein added. “We have to address the possession of it in order to protect kids.”

An investigation of VanCamp began in March 2023, when Google reported to the National Center for Exploited Children that a Google user had uploaded 14 files of suspected child sexual abuse materials to a Google account, according to court documents.

The National Center for Exploited Children sent a CyberTip to county detectives who in turn linked the Google internet account to VanCamp’s Bridgeport address.

Detectives reviewed the 14 files uploaded to the Google account and “all appear to be little girls, ages 5 to 12, in a state of nudity being posed or sexually molested,” county Detective Kathleen Kelly wrote in the arrest affidavit.

Detectives obtained a warrant to seize VanCamp’s cellphone and any other electronic devices he owned. Detectives subsequently tracked VanCamp to his girlfriend’s residence in June 2023 and he surrendered his cellphone to detectives at that time.

During an interview, VanCamp admitted he had been using the Google account until it was shut down by Google. VanCamp told detectives “he started viewing child sexual abuse materials files when he was 18 years old and viewed them as recently as the summer of 2022,” Kelly alleged in the criminal complaint.

Detectives seized all of VanCamp’s electronic devices and a forensic analysis of those devices found 21 images of child pornography, according to the criminal complaint.

Another charge of criminal use of a communication facility was dismissed against VanCamp.