MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Mara H. Gottfried
mgottfried@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 01/29/2014
Washington County Attorney Pete Orput said Wednesday that his office has declined to file charges against former priest Jonathan Shelley. Investigators concluded that images found on Shelley’s hard drive were not child pornography, Orput said.
“I concluded there is no criminal evidence,” he said Wednesday.
An investigation began last year into allegations that Shelley, who served in Mahtomedi, possessed child pornography on a computer he owned in 2004.
Shelley denied the allegation, and the case was closed Sept. 29 after discs turned over to police by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis were found to contain only adult porn.
Police reopened the case a few days later when a Hugo parishioner turned over files to police, which he said he had copied from Shelley’s hard drive.
St. Paul police department analysts examined the computer discs and sent the files to the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which found no child porn, Orput said. The task force sent the discs to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which came to the same conclusion, Orput said.
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