A Red Bank man was among 14 Monmouth County residents arrested in a summer-long investigation focused on online consumers of child pornography, county Prosecutor Christopher J. Gramiccioni said in a statement issued Friday.
Jude I. Taylor, 38, of Bridge Avenue, was arrested July 25 following an investigation that revealed that he used P2P file-sharing software to download child pornography images and videos, the statement said.
Taylor, said to be a landscaper, was charged with one count of third-degree endangering the welfare of a child (possession of child pornography).
He is represented by Kevin Wigenton of Red Bank.
The arrest came as part of “Operation School’s Out,” carried out by the prosecutor’s computer crimes unit and Monmouth County Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force between July 20, and August 31. Its aim was “to reduce online threats to Monmouth County children during one of their most vulnerable times – summer vacation – and to decrease the market for child sexual exploitation by focusing on those individuals seeking out and trafficking in child pornographic materials,” Gramiccioni’s statement said.
Among those arrested were a professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, a retired computer scientist who previously held federal government contracts, and an electronics technician.
All the defendants were released on the conditions that they have no unsupervised contact with children under the age of 18 and not use the internet, the prosecutor’s office said. One has the added conditions of surrendering his passport and reporting bi-weekly to a court officer.
