Court documents reveal disturbing details in the child pornography case against Penn State freshman Ian Shulman.
The 19-year-old was arrested on March 28 following a two month investigation. He is facing 53 charges of child pornography. All are third degree felonies, each punishable by up to seven years in prison and $15,000 in fines.
Agents from the state Attorney General’s Child Predator Unit say they traced emails containing pornographic images to Shulman’s internet account. The investigation began on January 31 when AOL notified authorities about suspicious emails.
Court records say investigators located emails containing child pornography five different times in January.
In those court documents, Brittney Baughman, a special agent with the Child Predator Unit says the emails contained images of very young girls. One of the images reportedly shows an infant. The court filing indicates that other images show girls that appear to range between one and four years old.
In the court documents, Shulman is quoted as telling investigators he was surprised how easy it was to obtain child pornography and the only reason he was doing this was to help police catch the people sending them. Shulman stated to investigators that he has been “looking for images” for three to four years. When investigators asked why he had not reported anything to authorities Shulman indicated he felt he did not have enough information.
Agents seized USB drives, a computer, an external hard drive and cell phones from Shulman’s dorm room in Beaver Hall.
Shulman waived his right to a preliminary hearing. He’s due to appear for his formal arraignment on May 5.
Shulman is free on $150,000 bail. He’s been ordered not to have any unsupervised contact with minors and is prohibited from using the Internet. He is represented by State College attorney Joe Amendola.
In a news release, Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane says, “The proliferation of child pornography on the Internet is frightening. My office is dedicated to investigating and prosecuting anyone that produces, disseminates or stores child pornography online.”
