Nov. 21—A Greentown man is now going through quite a few felony counts associated to crimes in opposition to kids after police say they positioned over 600 movies on his units depicting boys as younger as 7 years previous partaking in sexual exercise.
Austin Hewitt, 23, was arrested and charged final week on eight whole felony counts associated to child exploitation and possession of child pornography.
His charges stem from an Oct. 8 cyber tip that was generated by the Nationwide Middle for Lacking and Exploited Youngsters (NCMEC), per court docket paperwork, and officers with the Kokomo Police Division started investigating the tip after reportedly studying {that a} Dropbox account used to share the sexual content material got here again to an area account.
That account, based on police, was later decided to be Hewitt’s.
On Nov. 15, authorities initiated a search warrant on Hewitt’s Greentown residence, a possible trigger affidavit filed within the case said, and police reportedly seized a number of units they believed to be associated to the investigation.
Additionally they took Hewitt into custody with out incident.
Throughout an interview with investigators, Hewitt said he didn’t watch pornography however that he was a part of a “pornography dependancy group” in school, per court docket paperwork.
Hewitt then defined that his position within the group was to reportedly assist these hooked on pornography overcome their addictions by allegedly offering them with “novice porn” as an alternative of content material involving “actual” individuals, court docket paperwork indicated.
Nonetheless, per his interview with police, Hewitt instructed investigators he “may need downloaded a nasty file containing child pornography,” although he defined he by no means seen what he downloaded, based on the affidavit.
Authorities then reportedly confronted Hewitt with the alleged child pornography they discovered throughout a warranted search of his cellular phone, together with textual content messages referring to wanting movies of “younger boys,” court docket paperwork allege.
It was at the moment Hewitt reportedly requested for a lawyer.
He’s at the moment being held on $40,000 money bond solely, and he has a bail listening to set for 1 p.m. Nov. 28 inside Howard Superior Courtroom 1.
