Elkton man gets six months in jail for possessing child pornography

Cecil County Circuit Court Judge Keith A. Baynes imposed a five-year sentence on the defendant — Victor Allen Robinson, 31, of the unit block of Pinder Avenue — for one of his possession-of-child-pornography convictions and then suspended all but six months of the penalty, court records show.

Baynes gave Robinson credit for the 43 days that he had served as a pre-trial inmate in the county jail after his September arrest, which occurred three months after Maryland State Police detectives started their investigation. The judge also allowed Robinson to remain free on bond until 6 p.m. on Friday, when he must report to the Cecil County Detention Center to start serving the balance of his six-month term, according to court records.

In addition, Baynes imposed a consecutive three-year sentence on Robinson for his second possession-of-child-pornography conviction and then suspended the entire penalty.

Baynes ordered Robinson to register with the Cecil County Sex Offender Registry for the next 15 years, court records show.

(The registry allows law enforcement officers to monitor convicted sex offenders by phone and in person, and it also allows the public to keep tabs on convicted sex offenders through the program’s online site, where the current addresses of convicted sex offender and other information about them can be found.)

The judge also ordered Robinson to serve five years of supervised probation after completing his six-month jail term. As probation conditions, Robinson must forfeit his electronic devices and must refrain from illegally using the internet.

In addition, Baynes ordered Robinson to participate in the COMET (Collaborative Offender Management Enforcement Treatment) Program, which is marked by Parole & Probation agents working with treatment counselors and other agencies, including the State’s Attorney’s Office and the Sex Offender Registry, to supervise sex offenders.

Robinson entered Alford pleas to the two counts of possession of child pornography on Monday, one day before his jury trial was set to start, as part of a plea agreement reached by Assistant State’s Attorney Zachary Payne and Assistant Public Defender Nicholas Cooksley, court records show. (In an Alford plea, the defendant maintains his innocence while acknowledging that the state possesses enough evidence to convict him at trial.)

Detectives with MSP’s Computer Crimes Section, which is part of the Maryland Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, started their investigation on June 7, after receiving a cyber tip regarding someone who had uploaded 53 child pornography files to the internet, police said.

Those files contained photos and videos of nude girls — believed to be between the ages of 3 and 8 — engaged in sex acts by themselves and with men, police added.

During the investigation, which involved, in part, the checking and confirming of IP addresses, detectives identified Robinson as the suspect, police reported.

The investigation also involved a background check on Robinson, who, detectives learned on July 1, was arrested in 2006 “for sexually abusing a minor in Delaware,” according to court records. That led to MSP investigators meeting with a Delaware State Police detective on July 5, four days later, and that detective, in turn, located a police report authored by the New Castle (Del.) County Police Department, court records show.

That police report indicated that Robinson was 15 years old when he was “investigated and charged after having sexual contact” with two girls, ages 2 and 10, about 17 years ago, according to court records, which further show, “Robinson is no longer monitored by the sex offender registry program (relating to that Delaware case) and his record has been expunged.”

On Sept. 8, one day after conducting surveillance outside of Robinson’s Pinder Avenue residence, investigators raided his home and arrested Robinson there without incident, police reported.

During a court-approved search of Robinson’s residence, investigators found child pornography on his laptop computer and confiscated it, according to court records.

Robinson maintained during a police interview in September that he hadn’t viewed child pornography in three months, court records show.

“Robinson stated that he used to save child pornography to his Dropbox account, but recently deleted them. Robinson stated that he uses a Dark Web browser to view and download child pornography to his laptop computer . . . Robinson stated that he has a sexual attraction to prepubescent girls ranging in age from 3-years-old to adulthood. Robinson stated that he knew there would be consequences for viewing child pornography and that he ‘should have stopped years ago’,” according to a charging document that was made public after his September arrest.