GRAND FORKS-- An 85-year-old Grand Forks man was released on bond Tuesday after he appeared in court on charges he was in possession of child pornography.
Roger Lee Whaley was charged Monday with 10 counts of possessing child pornography, all Class C felonies, in Grand Forks District Court after law enforcement carried out a search warrant at his home in the 1700 block of Second Avenue North and found child porn on his computer, according to court records.
Whaley's bond was set at $15,000, and was bonded out of the Grand Forks County Jail after the hearing.
During the search Monday, law enforcement found a SanDisk flash drive or memory card in a computer in Whaley's home, according to court records. Officers found 10 images or videos of child pornography on the drive or card, which showed girls and boys between the ages of 1 and 9 years old being sexually assaulted by adults, according to court records.
The search was prompted by a tip submitted to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline, according to the Grand Forks Police Department.
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Tips to the CyberTipline--not only for child porn, but for other forms of child sexual exploitation--have more than tripled in 2015 compared with 2014, said Lindsey Olson, director of NCMEC's Exploited Child Division. The CyberTipline pulled in 3.6 million tips in the first 10 months of 2015 compared with 1.1 million tips in 2014, she said.
She linked the increase to measures taken by companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to automatically screen content sent through their services and flag objectionable content.
Whaley's next hearing is at 9 a.m. Dec. 21.
